


My Boy Builds Coffins

by wirewrappedlily



Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: I had to do it, Multi, don't ask: just read it, prerequisite zombie apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-02
Updated: 2019-01-13
Packaged: 2019-10-02 17:36:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 32,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17268458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wirewrappedlily/pseuds/wirewrappedlily
Summary: James had never been the kind of man to put his faith in anything or anyone without anything short of a miracle having happened. But Q, for all his youth and public-school polish, was nothing short of a miracle worker.Under Q's care, James had done things and survived more than anyone in his line of work with his aging body should've been capable of. James could trust him. James did trust him. And that was why when the Incident began, James found himself going to Q.Not to MI6; not to aid Queen and Country in this time of need. Just to Q. Just to make sure that Q was alright: that he would survive this, just as he'd helped James to survive everything else.





	1. Chapter 1

James Bond had seen his fair share of turmoil and anguish. He was no stranger to death, and had never even tried to pretend to know what life was really like for the people who walked through the world he worked so very hard to protect. 

There were three rules in James Bond's world. 

One: Love is, above all else, a liability. 

Two: There are two things in this world you can trust--gravity works, and death will catch up with you eventually. 

Three: The worst thing you can do is miss. 

It was simple, efficient, and would get him through his life. It was, in that respect, much like his Quartermaster. 

James had never been the kind of man to put his faith in anything or anyone without anything short of a miracle having happened. But Q, for all his youth and public-school polish, was nothing short of a miracle worker. 

Under Q's care, James had done things and survived more than anyone in his line of work with his aging body should've been capable of. James could trust him. James did trust him. And that was why when the Incident began, James found himself going to Q. 

Not to MI6; not to aid Queen and Country in this time of need. Just to Q. Just to make sure that Q was alright: that he would survive this, just as he'd helped James to survive everything else. 

James knew Q's address through a perusal of his files in Medical while Q had been admitted for high temperature and dehydration--Q having gotten that way by working himself through the early stages of pneumonia to help Bond blow up a great deal of Bucharest. He also knew that breaking into said address would more than likely end very, very badly, given that the Quartermaster had rigged something in his beloved Scrabble mug to release a chemical diuretic that could probably kill someone if the taste wasn't foul enough to tell whomever'd stolen the mug to stop drinking, it was no longer tea. 

He needn't have worried, however. Q's door burst open as he arrived at it, and the thing that came snarling through just missed hitting Bond by a hair's breadth before James was taking cover against the side of the building as Q stepped into the doorway with a machine gun comically large for how slight he was. Q let off a short burst, and the snarling thing's head made the most sickening crunch on the pavement, its body staying standing only for a few moments more before it dropped, too. 

James took in Q with all the clinical ease of a man who was paid to do this; seeing the pallor and Q's slight tremors around the gun, even as he stared at the zombie he'd just shot the head off of. "Quartermaster." James tried, voice soft and smooth. 

"Yes, Bond. Come in, it's not so much safe out here." Q replied, voice detached, but steady. His eyes weren't leaving the body of what had been a man, though, and James wondered who it had been to Q. 

"Were you bitten?"

"No, Bond. I'm perfectly fine, for having just killed my husband. Come along, before the noise attracts anything else." Q finally stood aside in the doorway, but kept himself there enough so that he could continue to stare down at the body. 

James hadn't known he'd been married; would never have even guessed it, but now the slight trembling in his usually-steady hands made sense in a way that James wished it wouldn't. James put his hand over Q's on the gun, gently taking it from him and shepherding him into the foyer, closing and locking the door behind them. "Q, I'm going to contact Alec and Moneypenny. They--" 

"Bring them here. This is my fortress; tell them their best chance of survival is here."

Q blinked, looking up at Bond with haunted eyes when his orders weren’t immediately met. "Are you su--" 

"Of bloody course I'm sure, Bond. Alec and Eve are my friends as much as they are yours, and if you intend on disappearing into that madness after having come here at all, you're very sorely mistaken. We stick together." 

The only thing stopping James from narrowing his eyes in analysis was the years of training keeping his poker face perfect. "Are there boffins we should be retrieving?" 

Q snorted, "Rosie will have racked up more kills than you could on her way here, and the rest of my people will make their way to the tunnels. It's easier to defend in our territory. This can be a topside outpost." 

Bustling into a parlour, James watched Q as he dismantled the gun, his movements all practiced and easy, but with a jerky edge that James took to mean that the facade of calm was just that. "Q..." James only managed to have more to say when Q looked up at him, eyes wide and waiting, "...I never knew you were married." 

"Yes, well. What you don't know about me could be encyclopedic, Bond. I'm a private person and you're a textbook narcissist." Q muttered, one brow raising and his movements evening out. James chuckled at the teasing, shaking his head, "He wasn't going to remain my husband for long, in any case. Before he...turned, he and I were having what I would have called our last stand." 

"I'm sorry, Q." James murmured with sincerity. He didn't know why; more and more of the men and women of MI6 were finding themselves broken-hearted when it came to vows of eternal love, but Q's sat ill on James's shoulders. He didn't like the way Q wouldn't meet his eye; and he could do without the careful dodge of giving away information that Q had held dear, like when they'd married, where they'd met. 

"It happens when you're cheated on and then the cheater makes the claim that it's your fault they've cheated." Q said with a snippiness that was only just not covered by the lightness in his tone. 

"What?" James hissed, getting abruptly angry. 

Q shrugged, "He cheated on me with his twenty-year-old female secretary and then had the balls to claim it's because I've been emotionally distant since...well, he didn't know it, but since Skyfall." Q glanced up, "He never knew...what I do. What I'm capable of--" 

"Pyjamas, laptop, tea." James mused, then his eyes narrowed, "How could he not see that?" 

"I dropped out of uni because I was bored; played it off, when MI6 picked me up, as being stupid, and he...he fell for it." 

James's hand was clenched around the side of the antique side table Q had been dismantling the gun onto, and Q looked down pointedly, looking back up to see James's unstoppable gaze doing its damnedest to strip him bare. "You...cannot...be serious." James grit. 

Q snorted, something that James had never had the chance to catch him at, there was so little humour in their lives. "You might've, James, had you not been 007; just passing me on the street." 

"He was your husband. He should've bloody known." James growled. 

Q stopped cleaning the gun and looked at him, "James, You almost sound like a romantic." 

"Bugger off," James laughed, and Q flashed a grin that was like the blade of a knife, James suddenly fighting the urge to make him smile like that as much as he could. 

"If Eve's with Alec, she'll bring him here." Q reasoned. "We need to start gathering the supplies I have here. Take stock, see what else we might need." 

"You brought weapons here without your husband noticing?" 

Q's grin flashed again, cold and sharp and infinitely dangerous, "He wasn't a very clever man."

"Obviously." James retorted, "Why the bloody hell would you marry a prat?" 

Q paused, tilting his head slightly as if in speculation. James had seen it before; minions would pull Q out of his code to come and kit out his latest missions, and it was such an endearingly perfect gesture that James had to shift, clearing his throat. "Mostly because...I needed him. He didn't know what I was. Didn't know what I could do. Didn't want me just because I could do it. I thought life with him would be...simple. Steady, because if there were turmoil at home as well as work, I might well have simply imploded around the time you fed that work of art to the Komodo dragon." 

"You wanted him because he was boring." 

"No. I wanted him because...in our line of work, things are never stable. So he'd take me for a walk, we'd have tea...Imagine what the movies claim to be normalcy, Bond. That was my life with him." 

"You weren't happy." James had meant to ask it, but the words held such conviction that it gave Q pause.

"No. But I didn't and don't need happy. I need stable." 

"Why not both?" 

Q looked up at him, "Really, Bond, I may be prettier than you normally give me credit for, but this is rather a one-eighty on the scales. He wasn't a bad man; he had a job; a family. I had everything I needed to be content." 

James let the silence stretch out instead of pressing his point further, letting out a short, growling sigh and moving to re-assemble the cleaned gun. "You know where your guns are better than I would." James reminded him, bending his head over the gun coming back together in his hands as though he actually had to concentrate on it. 

Q shook his head, but made no comment, turning and moving to get together his miniature armoury. There were more knives than James would've expected, hidden in pockets against the chairs and secured under the top of book shelves; the gathering of weapons growing with a miniature rocket launcher that looked to be filled with putty--plastique, if James wasn't mistaken--and a flame thrower that looked as if it was mounted along the wearer's arm, its muzzle fit in the palm of the hand and a pack of the accelerant that would sit in the curve of a lower back. James picked it up carefully, looking up at Q with a shade of confusion, "You've never seen it before because of your bloody bespoke suits, Bond. Can't have the bulk against you back, or it'd make it bloody obvious you were armed with it." 

James raised his eyebrows, "Well, there's something rather more important than international espionage afoot now, so consider this claimed." He muttered covetously, and Q snorted at him, shaking his head. 

"Don't let Mallory hear you say there's anything more important than espionage, James, or he may send you on some work-appreciation exercise." 

James snorted, shaking his head like a great old dog shaking off a fly, "Well, threats would be thinner on the ground in the country, though so too would resources." 

Q raised a brow, "You of all people, James, are not one to run from a threat." James smiled slowly in reply, the danger in every line of his body making Q swallow. 

James armed himself efficiently, preparing to cut a swathe through a horde in order to extract their friends. Q stepped up with a cluck of the tongue, reaching for the flamethrower contraption. He slipped it off of James's arm, shaking his head and taking a deep breath, "You're lucky we're of a height, Bond, or this would never work." With nimble fingers, Q plucked at the piece, laying it against his palm correctly and draping it up his arm in a way that wouldn't restrict his movement at all. "I made it for my right arm, but with a little twist...we can make it work. This way, your gun hand isn't interfered with and this can still be of use." 

"I thought you were right-handed." 

"Ambidextrous, actually. But I'd built it with a preference for precision rather than destruction, and I rather dislike using guns." 

"It seems you're in the wrong business, Quartermaster." 

"Or I'm in just the right business, James." Q waved a hand at the selection of weapons, "I can come up with something that will incapacitate, but not kill; something that will kill without agony. Being in MI6 allows me to have at my disposal everything I might need." 

James smirked, respect for his Quartermaster growing. "You wouldn't be able to access CCTV footage to forecast a good route, would you?" 

Q shot him a look, James smirking at the clear 'will you never know me?' inherent in that expression. "You are not going out there until we know that Eve and Alec are not already on their way here." 

"You're quite confident that Eve and this Rosie character will undoubtedly come here."

As if the universe itself were on Q's side, a knock on the door interrupted anything Q would have replied with. "Boss?! The corpse out here looks an awful lot like Lucas."

"That would be because it is Lucas, Rosie." Q answered with a smirk at Bond, stepping around the overprotective agent to answer his door. The girl on the other side was a vision of loveliness, pressing a red-lipped kiss to Q's cheek as she stepped through, her features pinched. "It's alright...he blamed me for sleeping with that poor airhead he managed to seduce into duplicity."

"And after we upgraded her computer systems!" Rosie exclaimed as though in agreement with some underlying point, her incredibly rich brown eyes taking in Bond and her lips pursing. "007, to what does the overlord owe the pleasure?"

"Asset protection." Q answered before Bond's brain could cough some semblance of one up. "Alec will be with Moneypants, but I would--"

"I'll get the hack started, boss. Oh, I brought you a present. My mother sends her regards." With a dimpling smile, Rosie pulled a canister out of the backpack slung over one shoulder. Q took it with an expression akin to rapture, popping the top open to take a sniff. "She sent it over in a care package along with that henna you asked for, but I rather forgot that bit." 

The heavy spice that pervaded the air was cloyingly good, Q's look of rapture explained by the contents: loose tea leaves, an Indian blend of proper chai tea if Bond could recognize the scent correctly. 

"Just so long as you remember that curry recipe, because I nominate you for cook." Q grinned at her widely, and Rosie laughed, sitting heavily at the kitchen table and bringing out her laptop. "How did your weapons hold up?" 

"I think I might have gotten some grey matter in the barrel of this one." Rosie replied idly, divesting herself even while she logged into her system and got immediate access to the wifi. James wondered just how close Q was if this girl was so familiar, her mother sending Q gifts in a care package. 

"Bond, if you'd be so good as to help out, I'd like to make some tea for us, it will be a long night." James only barely kept himself from startling as Q turned to him, lips thinned and voice back to being all business. 

"You sure you wouldn't rather leave that to me?" Rosie asked teasingly, tipping her head back to regard Q upside down. 

Q regarded the leaves, his lower lip dimpling as he bit down on it, "Okay, you make tea, Bond cleans the guns, and I'll hack London." 

Rosie giggled fondly, slipping out of her seat and relinquishing the computer to Q. "You obviously haven't had enough tea today, boss. Thinking tactically versus strategically." Snorting to herself, Rosie disappeared out of sight as she started digging through cupboards. James moved to sit at the chair at right angles to Q's, picking up the gun carefully and examining it. 

The clip inside was not filled with the standard bullets issued by Q-Branch, and Bond puzzled over that for a moment before he caught Q eyeing him, "Rosie is a master marksman, she is testing a new weapons design. Each of those has the power to blow off a limb, and also cauterize the wound."

"That way, there's no bleeding out during interrogation, but if you want fatality, you go for the head or the heart." Rosie piped up, putting a silver-coloured pitcher on the stovetop. 

James blinked, looking back at Q in surprise. "What are the rounds made of?"

"Energy." Rosie answered, "The gun itself turns the heat and energy expulsion of firing rounds into more rounds. It's quite a lovely little closed system." 

James glanced at the boffin whose hands were a blur over computer keys, his eyes ticking back and forth under the reflective surface of his glasses. 

"Boss thought of it after that time you got burned by the barrel of your sidearm. Do you know how bloody difficult it is to create a closed system that goes off of heat to create a shot of energy that will go where you want to direct it, and then have to make it small enough to fit the standard dimensions of your average handgun?" Rosie demanded, hand on her hip and a sharp, black brow raised, her nut-brown skin flawless as she stared Bond down. The tiny diamond in her nose caught the light, and James wondered why the hell he'd never taken notice of this vision before. 

No voice was required to tell him exactly why, though; not when Q looked up, his smile as dangerous as the glint in the abyss of her dark eyes. "First of all: you had fun, don't try to tell me you didn't and still aren't; secondly, they're headed here as predicted, and ninety-seven percent of Q-Branch staff have reached the tunnels safely, the final three percent are holding out the topside offices until final supplies can be raided down." 

"How are we doing for supplies?" James asked, putting the cleaned gun back together carefully. 

"We're set for non-perishables and if I know the Overlord, he's taken the warning that toilet paper is gold to heart." Rosie quirked half her mouth into a smirk, and Q snorted in reply though it didn't seem like he was paying attention anymore. "I'm more worried about--" 

Q looked up sharply, managing to cut her off just with that, and James looked between them as they seemed to silently communicate. 

Clearing her throat, Rosie seemed to give over, turning her dark eyes to Bond. "In any case, we should be alright for now." 

"I think if we have a shot at survival, secrets like those ought not to be kept." James said easily, focusing on Q. 

The young Quartermaster cocked a brow at him, lips pursing. "It does not concern your survival, Bond. As such, if you feel you still need to know, you may feel free to make the very ill-advised decision to bail out of this...team we are creating." 

James knew his lips were thinning, his gaze becoming dark and piercing: it was a look he'd learned from M before she'd died. "It may not effect the chances of my survival, but if we are, as you say, a team; I have a right to know if it affects the chances of yours." 

Rosie cleared her throat hard, glaring at Q pointedly, but the Quartermaster didn't budge an inch. 

"My personal concerns, Bond, are my own." Q plastered on something that was nowhere near a smile, "Thank you for your worry." 

Rosie let out a huff of frustration that almost sounded like a scream, throwing her hands into the air as she turned back to the tea. "Sir, if you get killed for being an idiot, I will make sure that that's all you'll be remembered for." 

Q raised a brow, "Not that night we all got drunk on saki and I ended up singing and dancing to 'Undigested Lump'?" 

Rosie ended up snorting her own tea out of her nose, and James decided his survival was dependent on finding some sort of footage to the incident in question. 

"Oh, Boss, if you call that dancing, we're gonna have to let The Destroyer get his hands on you." Q snorted a laugh as Rosie shook her head fondly at him, and James felt a sudden flash of piqued curiosity at who the hell this Destroyer could be, the jealousy flaring in him kept viciously repressed. 

"I'm not sure that would much help, Rosie, but point taken." 

Rosie let a brow bob, her smirk widening as she looked between Bond and Q, setting down the properly prepared chai. "I'm sure he could inspire something a little more...Graceful, at the very least. If not the same amount of unspeakably sexy." 

Q mirrored Rosie's earlier snort, tea actually coming out of his nose this time. "You, Rosie, are the only soul on the planet that would mistake that for having been sexy." 

"On the contrary, Boss: your hips do not lie." Easily ducking as Q lobbed a mandarin orange at her head from the placement at the centre of the table, she threw a sultry grin over her shoulder, and James couldn't help but crack up at the ease with which Q and his boffin interacted. 

"Q," James drew the Quartermaster's attention back, looking down to lay his hand over Q's to keep him paying attention, "our chances of survival are dependant upon asking for all the help we can get. I need to know everything there is to be known: you need to tell me." 

Q swallowed, taking a deep breath, "There are some things, James, that I'm afraid that I can't be saved from, no matter what help I ask for." 

Twisting easily out from under James's hands, Q stood and moved to the front of the house, letting Moneypenny and Alec inside before they even had a chance to knock. James looked up at Rosie, but she could only shake her head, pale and sad. 

"I don't know the problem with anymore certainty than you do, Bond: the only reason I know there's reason to worry is because Q-Branch discussed it, once. Who of us would survive the end of the world. Q told us then that he wouldn't last very long at all." 

James took a deep breath, eyes shifting towards the hall Alec and Moneypenny were making their way down as Q filled them in on the plan thus far. "I think, Miss Lakshmi, that I'm going to have to ask for your help in proving Q wrong." 

A slow, dangerous smile spread like ink in water over her features, "As if you ever had to ask to begin with." 

James rose from his seat, greeting Alec and Eve warmly as Q slipped silently in behind them. Q went and got two more mugs for tea, though James knew for a fact Alec had sworn off any and all hot drinks. Carefully, James slipped one of the mugs away, taking a chance and finding only ginger ale and fruit-flavoured soft drinks to choose from. James turned with raised brows, and Alec and he had known each other for long enough now that he didn't have to say a damned thing to explain the situation, Alec just shrugged and rolled his eyes as if he was disappointed James had expected more than that from their Quartermaster. 

Alec accepted his mug of ginger ale gratefully as Q turned to James with a puzzled look. 

"Q, are you alright?" Eve asked, cutting Q off from whatever he was about to say regarding the two Double-Ohs. 

His eyes were wide, though not uncharacteristically so, James realized, and his features were just as pale and remote as they had always been in his domain of Q-Branch. "Why? Because the world's falling apart around our ears and I killed my husband because of it?" 

Eve was silent as she reached out her arms to him, and James appeared to be the only one surprised when Q willingly went into them. "He didn't deserve you, poppit." She murmured, brushing her dangerously manicured nails through his curls. 

Q let out a disbelieving laugh, "According to you, Moneypants, no one deserves me."

"And I stand by my assessment, Quartermaster." She replied easily, a smile in her voice.

"She's right, Q, he was a complete wanker and good riddance to bad rubbish." Alec supplied, his eyes gleaming in a particular way as he glanced at James quickly before looking back at Q. 

Rosie groaned, "I will put your name down for sensitivity training when the world goes right-side-up again, Alec, don't for a second think I won't." Moneypenny stifled a giggle, and Q was shaking his head, looking at Eve with something akin to disbelief. "I don't know how you date him, ma'am."

"Q, Rosie, if either of you ever dated Double-Ohs, you'd understand the sacrifice." 

Alec snorted softly, his arm wrapping around Eve's hips as she leaned into him, and James felt a little lost at that: he hadn't realized Alec and Eve had finally made the move that had been building momentum between them for longer than James could say without feeling as though the implications of it cast Alec as a frightened teenager instead of a goddamn Double-Oh. 

"In any case, we have tea and food and beds for now." Q counted off, "I intend on staying awake for first watch, there are some people I should get into contact with while it's still possible. One of us should be awake and alert at all times so that we have a faster reaction time if something happens."

"I'm taking first watch with you, Q, you need to get into whatever you're trying to get into." James cut in, glancing at Alec with a painful kind of hope twisted in his chest. "Watch shouldn't be done alone." He finished when Alec didn't clue in. 

"We've got an odd woman out here," Rosie chirped, sounding nervous. "But the boss doesn't like to use guns, so what if we trade off?" 

"Q, James, Rosie, and I tonight; Rosie, Eve, James and I tomorrow, and so on." Alec figured. 

"With any luck, this won't last long." Q hummed. 

"Alec, we should do a quick sweep of the house, make sure all doors and windows are secure." Rosie beckoned, "Boss, get to typing."

"That leaves you and I for getting sleeping arrangements sorted out," Eve nodded to Bond, "let's get to it." 

Unwilling to leave Q alone, but equally unwilling to suffer the wrath he had no doubt would rain down on him if he were to so much as imply that Q were in any way vulnerable, James followed Eve obediently, wondering how the hell he'd been discounted from securing the premises. 

"Alec and I can take the master bedroom." Eve started, pulling down sheets from the linen closet, and James couldn't help but wonder how many times she'd been here. "The guest room should be good for Rosie. There's a fainting couch Q can use in his study, lord knows he sleeps more there or at work than he ever managed in his own damn bed--"

"Which leaves me on a couch?" 

"No, it leaves you on the pull-out in Q's study with him. He doesn't sleep on pull-outs, and I'm not kidding when I tell you that he sleeps more on that damn couch than he does on a proper bed."

"Why doesn't he sleep on pull-outs?" 

Eve's eyes were bright with laughter, her lips pursed with her amusement, "One tried to eat him, once. Started folding back in somehow while he was on it, and though it was more amusing than scary, I don't blame him for being unwilling to repeat it. Especially if it'd draw disdain from you afterwards." 

"Me? What's--he can handle..."

"James," Eve began, eyes going soft now, "he can handle himself against you just fine, but why do you think a person like Q would live in a loveless marriage that sent him into Q-Branch most nights? He's fucking brilliant, but he's not nearly as sure of himself as he seems." 

James raised an eyebrow, pure skepticism written all over his features. "You're telling me that the man who implicated that I was scrap, that on our first meeting told me that he could do more on his laptop before his first cup of tea than I could do in a year--that man has self-esteem issues?" 

Eve gave him a squarely terrifying look. "This from a man who's never had any reason to attempt to make an enemy think him invincible?" 

"I am not an enemy."

"You were then." Eve replied. "The first thing off the bat is the accusation of spots, that his youth is a liability, and you don't think that'd get the hackles of a man, warned that you kill what you don't find useful, up?" 

James opened and closed his mouth, fury firing through him as his mind tumbled and tossed, analyzing. "I--"

"You have no leg to stand on, Bond. Q is strong, and he's genius, but he's been told his whole life that he's disposable, and every teasing jab you make just ends up being buried for later, when all of it comes up to try to crush him again." 

James blinked, thinking of the melancholy, breathless quiet of his own moments. He was, actually, disposable; there were no illusions about that to be had in the Double-Oh programme. But for Q to have been apparently told this from childhood, to have grown up with it always just in the back of his mind, day in and day out, it put pieces together. Q was the best there had ever been, and yet he still faded into the background whenever he could. He was reserved until his exuberance couldn't be contained any longer--as if he'd learned early that the life he had in him was something to be hidden or smothered. 

"I'm not telling you to stop; and I don't think in any way that this is the fault of anyone but the bastards who planted the damn seeds, but you need to know that there are limits to what I'll allow you to say to him. And if you think about hurting him, I will kill you this time around." 

Eve nearly slipped past him into the guest room with her arms full of fresh sheets, but he caight her, pulling her around, "Rosie mentioned there was something to be worried over..." 

Eve's mouth tightened, "She's right, thank you for reminding me. I...I do know what it is--"

"You don't have to tell me," James soothed immediately; he wanted Q to be the one to tell him, amd he questioned why immediately, "all I ask is that you let me keep an eye on him if you can't."

Eve nodded once, sipping in a breath. "Come along, Bond; I expect military corners on these sheets." She said finally, an attempt at her usual spark made and appreciated, even if it only fizzled out. 

"So, you and Alec..." James began, unsure of who in this relationship he needed to try to warn off. 

"Don't bother, it's an insult to both of us if you do." Eve warned him, her gaze sharp as they remade the guestroom bed and laid out a towel set. 

"What happens when the power goes out?" James asked instead. "I can't imagine the boffins lasting long."

"Q has a generator in the house, though we've yet to find out how many people this has afflicted, so with any luck, it won't be too concerning." 

"Any idea about the scale of this thing?" 

"As far as Alec and I saw, it's mainly been people who were out on the streets." Eve sighed, shaking her head, "I don't know how Lucas got infected--" 

"He was with the mistress when she turned." Rosie told them in a stage whisper, creeping in with Alec on her heels. Alec ticked a brow at Eve, and she shook her head again, "He's dead anyway, and it was Q who needed to get rid of the wanker." 

"You two," Eve gestured between the Double-Ohs, "both get night terrors from time to time, and Q has nightmares every night--"

"How is it you and I are the only two who sleep like normal people?" Rosie huffed, placing a small device on the window sill and triggering it. "The Overlord can't be woken from these nightmares. Not safely, in any case, so don't try if you see him having one." 

"And if either of these idiots have a night terror, we converge in the den and lock the door." Eve told Rosie, placing her hands on the girl's shoulders. Rosie's dark eyes looked rebellious, and James wondered why the hell the girl would look like that being told how to keep herself safe. "Even if Alec has me, you're to lock the door to den with you and Q and James inside it." 

James's whole demeanour changed, looking up to Alec, who was focused on Rosie rather than Eve, even with this absurdity about him trapping her with him. It was dangerous, and James felt his instinct to protect roar in the back of his head; a demand to know what the hell was going on bubbling in the back of his throat. 

"You hurt her," Rosie threatened Alec, "and I'll use your testicles for Christmas ornaments. Do I make myself clear?"

Alec gave a tiny smile, "That's nothing compared to what Eve would do to me, love. Believe me." 

"Damn right." Eve laughed, and Rosie shook her head, fitting under Eve's arm like a regular fixture there. 

"It sounds as though we shouldn't even be here." James growled once Eve and Rosie had trouped together out of the room. 

Alec looked at him as if he'd never quite seen him before, and James's jaw twitched at the things he could see in his friend's gaze. "Mate, if you hadn't noticed, Q trusts us enough to let the both of us in with three civilians and a fuck tonne of weaponry. I know about his cache, James, and I know that if it comes down to it, Q trusts us--trusts you--to be able to keep them safe even though we could pose a threat. Now, Eve and Rosie? They can handle themselves, and so can the Quartmaster, perhaps especially with his aversion to guns." 

"Did you know that it was 'proven' on Mythbusters that a non-reloading weapon, i.e. a baseball bat or axe will actually be more effective in a zombie apocalypse than a gun or rifle? Takes too long to reload." Q muttered absently as he wandered into the room, though he freed one hand from the tablet in his arms to make finger quotes. He finally looked up, pushing his glasses further up his nose with a finger to the bridge of the nose, "So my aversion to guns proves useful until we inevitably get to the point where we all want to shoot each other in the head to avoid watching any more of our loved ones tragically turn." 

"You shot your husband, love, I think you've proven yourself above that particular cliche." Eve murmured, following him back in and pressing a kiss to his cheek as she handed James a .22, "Put it in the holster attached to the underside of the fainting couch, please, Bond; it's useless for long-range shooting, but on the off chance anything manages to get in, it'll be fun to watch you shoot it through the eye only to have the bullet ricochet through the skull enough to liquefy whatever grey matter is left." 

James let out a derisive snort, taking the weapon and stowing it away, silently filing away the information that Eve had him place it within easy reach of Q rather than Bond. "You know, the whole feasting-on-brains thing doesn't work. I mean, have you ever once in those movies seen a zombie whose brain has already been chomped upon?" Q posed, and no one for a moment entertained the idea of replying. "I mean, there are certain spores in nature that like to fall on ants, take them for a ride, attach the ant to a tree while it slowly eats its way through all the gooey bits and then releases more spores to fall on more ants, but otherwise--" 

"Q, your areas of expertise are varied and frightening." Eve laughed, shaking her head. "Alec, I trust you to burn Lucas's things and salt the earth." 

"Not here, for god's sake." Q groaned, "Light and heat and noise are the things that attract the classic zombies, and I know for a fact that if Alec were to start a damn bonfire of my husband's things, it would result in ritual chanting of 'ding-dong the evil prat is dead'." 

Rosie let out a surprised cackle from down the hall, and Eve managed a straight face for all of two minutes before bursting into laughter, "Boss, it's good to have you back!" the young hacker called, and Alec grinned at Q, chucking him on the shoulder. 

"I'm not going to mourn him, I've just decided." Q told them primly, "I'm going to make it out of this damned apocalypse alive and then I'm going to bang Mr. Wrong like a screen door in a hurricane and return to life as it should be." 

"That sounds like the perfect recipe for Psych to prod you to death, dear." Eve sighed, "Is there a Mr. Wrong you have in mind?" 

"Not in particular, no. Someone who looks nothing like Lucas seems like a good start." 

"Just make sure the sex is satisfying, and you'll be fine." Alec diagnosed, earning a smack over the back of the head from Eve, "What? He's a grown man, he can bang whom he wants to." 

"Whom?" Rosie mocked, "You're starting to sound awfully posh, Alec." 

"Blame him." Alec pointed at Q. 

Laughing, Q ducked under Eve's arm, wrapping his own around her waist as they traipsed back downstairs, Rosie already sitting at her laptop. "The minions want to know how you want us to equip the Destroyer, Boss." 

"Who the bloody hell is this Destroyer?" James asked, turning on Alec, who simply smirked. 

"You are." Rosie, Q, and Eve answered in unison, sitting around the kitchen table. 

"You destroy half the tech you're sent out with." Eve pointed out. 

"And most of the lives of the women you date." Alec snorted, clapping him on the back. 

Q looked up at Alec over his specs, one brow cocked, and Alec looked chastised. "I'm the Overlord, Bond, we had to come up with a nickname for you." With a smile, Q took up his tea, breathing deeply before he took a sip. "And in Marvel, the Destroyer is a metal creation that can't be killed, and can't be stopped, and its animating force, the core of what it is, is a complete mystery." 

"Marvel as in the comics? Brian Braddock and Iron Man?" 

"Yep!" Rosie chirped, her impish features beaming with pleasure that he knew that reference. "Overlord, may I make Bond watch the movies?" 

"God, no." Q and Eve groaned together, "The ideas it would give him alone..." 

Rosie and Alec snorted. "The number of hours we spend on airplanes, Quartermaster, you would think that I would have seen it." 

"I feel like you would've asked for a Widow's Bite at the very least..." Q mused, "perhaps a hammer made from pieces of a dwarf star?" 

"Why ask for trinkets when an exploding pen provides so much more promise?" James asked, smirking as Q rolled his eyes. 

"Well, as it is the end of the world as we know it," Q muttered, shaking his head. "Come with me." 

James followed with Eve and Alec behind him, all three agents curious what the boffin had gotten up to that would require the end of the world for him to bring himself to present it to James. "Q, are you quite sure about this?" Eve asked pointedly, stumbling ahead of the others as Q swept down the hall and headed for a cupboard under the stairs. "You're kidding...this is where the magic happens?" She laughed, "This is where you hid your home lab?" 

"I may have lied about the fact there was no basement in this place." Q shrugged a shoulder, "It's a good thing that he didn't insist I move in with him, huh?" unlocking the door, Q reached in, triggering something that opened the bottom out of the closet. 

"You, darling, are full of surprises." Alec chuckled, "Now, what is down there? Should we be worried?" 

"That depends...are we quantifying what we would worry about as street access, or would it be more about the sheer number and range of explosives down there?" 

James snorted, shaking his head as Eve let out a sigh, rolling her eyes and following Q into the lab. 

With one of Q's guns in his pocket, James fought down the urge to push his way through to the front just to make sure that if there was any danger to be faced, he would be the one to face it. 

"As it happens, the tunnel I was digging out which would access the tunnels to Q-Branch is unfinished, and therefore, there is no way in here beyond that door." Q told them. "As for the explosives, they're kept in fire-proof safes that will contain a blast." He turned as he got the bottom of a small set of stairs, "Welcome to my personal Chocolate Factory, Charlie." 

"Holy mother of God..." Alec muttered, shaking his head as they all scanned the room with a sense of wonderment. "How much of this stuff are we never going to see in the field?" 

Q glanced around speculatively, "Well, usually, about five percent of this stuff will actually make it past my experimentation. The rest is either completely impractical in terms of cost-effectiveness or not safe enough to be sent into active duty. Either because it's too easily turned against an agent, or because it's too delicate not to cause a problem."

James raised his brows, wandering over to an intimidating-looking locked enclosure that seemed to house the tiniest of guns. "And what is this, your take on Men In Black's Grasshopper?"

Q couldn't keep the mirth off of his features, nodding with more laughter than there was pride. "I'd been ill...watched a few too many gloriously bad movies." 

Bond moved towards him as he shrugged, ducking his head slightly to turn to whatever contraption he'd brought them down to see. Q flipped a lightswitch, and gallery lighting brought to veiw a caseline of pens that seemed as though they belonged more in a high-end shop than a mad scientist's lair. "You didn't," Eve hissed, looking at Q with something akin to murder in her eyes. 

Alec gave a laugh, turning to punch Bond in the arm, "And you wonder why I like this boffin best." 

"I have actually never wondered that, Alec." James replied softly, moving to Q's side. "They don't simply blow up, do they?" It was more a statement than a question, his eyes on the Quartermaster rather than the prize he'd been asking for for their entire working relationship. 

"The white ones deliver a highly refined toxin and will deliver the antivenin as well should it be needed; the wooden beauties hide a small syringe for blood withdrawal and analysis; those blue ones hide a lazer with the ability to cut through twelve-inch solid steel, and the precision that you could cut through a display case without cracking the glass around the cut; and the black ones are, of course, equipped with five explosive charges each. Shoot them like a dart, arm by clicking the top of the pen thrice, then detonate by twisting it counter-clockwise. And they can all write, of course." James took a faltering step towards the display case in absolute awe before turning suddenly, his eyes so thankful that Q startled. "Not remotely cost-effective, but...I was...well, I was bored, and you're damnably annoying." 

Laughing softly, James resisted the urge to pull Q to him and kiss him, shaking his head instead and touching his arm, "You're bloody brilliant, Q. Have I mentioned that recently?"

"It's pretty much constantly implied, 007." Rosie answered for him, "We don't want to give up the house just yet, I know, but we might want to build up a panic bunker down here." 

Q nodded, though his gaze didn't waver from Bond's, "I've got enough supplies for myself down here. Beds won't be a problem if push comes to shove--" 

"A California King, Q?" Eve laughed, teasing. 

"No, I've been working on a polymer that can be released to create...a soft landing." Q replied, gesturing to a pile of what looked like the foam meant to soften a hospital bed. 

"Lord knows James jumps from enough buildings to warrant the damn thing." Rosie sighed, walking over to it and poking it with the toe of her boot.

"Not ready to take the force of gravity upon an agent, but comfortable enough." Q asserted, crossing his arms over his chest, "It will also float if need be, and because of the way it groups, it can't be sunk, which I thought was quite lovely."

"How would an operative falling from a height activate it?" James asked curiously, eyes taking in what he assumed was the chemistry paraphenalia dedicated to the creation. He refused to think of how simply better it would have been to have been shot off of the train bridge with a proverbial safety net beyond the water that had hit him hard enough to wind, any molecule of air forced from his lungs with his hopes of survival. 

"Haven't gotten to synthesizing that bit, but I was thinking that using a casing that made it look like a marble, soluble in water and able to crack with enough force." Q replied easily. "It rapidly expands to the size of approximately a double bed, as you can see."

"And it can't be sunk, you say? So there wouldn't be any of that Titanic nonsense stopping more than one person from using it or having it sink." 

"Well, it won't sink, but given enough weight, it will take on water. I would love to tweak it to make it so that it will expand should that happen, but then we risk it expanding in any contact with water, which would result in a sponged up ocean." 

James's lips twitched, though Q couldn't see it. His eyes were far off now, his mind running overdrive, and from the expression on his face, they were not the best of thoughts. "The pens are more beautiful than I can say, Quartermaster." James murmured, stepping close. Q swayed slightly on his feet, as though drawn into the wall of heat James presented. "But for now, we'd do well to rest, wouldn't you say?"

Offering his hand to the boffin, James followed Alec and Eve up the stairs, his ears pricked for any sign that something had managed to break its way in while they were in the no-doubt soundproofed lab. Alec and Eve looked at each other in a silent communication James had rarely seen; only in the most solid of relationships had he ever seen two people able to communicate simply with their eyes. "Q," Eve's voice was powerful, carrying easily, "when was the last time you ate?"

Q blinked, squinting over at the clock on the wall of the kitchen owlishly as they all convereged above ground once more. "Um...Lunch."

Alec snorted to himself, ducking around Eve and James to offer his hand to Rosie, bringing her around with him, "Shall we dance, Miss Lakshmi?" 

She took his hand, letting out a squeal of laughter as he twirled her into the kitchen proper, "Destroyer, go sit with the Boss and let Eve tell you about the time that we took him out and got him to do karaoke." 

Q let out a groan that seemed to originate from his toes, trudging towards the front room with Eve laughingly trailing him, James taking up the rear. 

Q sat primly on the couch, then blinked once, a slow look of something between rebellion and sadness taking over his features as he kicked his shoes off unceremoniously, pulling his feet up under him and flopping over against the arm of the couch, a posture that it seemed hadn't been allowed before. For as much as James wanted to know all about Q's wilder side, he found himself wondering at this man that Q had evidently chosen to marry. James sat smoothly beside him, leaning back against the back of the couch and letting one arm lay along the brocade, his hand positioned in such a way that it would have been tangled in Q's hair if the man had sat upright. Q raised a brow, and James simply changed tactics and reached over, snagging his feet in their mismatched socks and pulling until they were lying in his lap, his hands tending to a careful massage through the brightly coloured wool encasing each appendage. 

Q let out a low groan of pleasure when James dug into the arch of his foot, and Eve snorted at him, shaking her head, "You have been working far too hard."

"No rest for the wicked," James replied for him, and it earned him a quiet grin as Q shifted down on the couch, laying with his back against the armrest and closing his eyes. 

"May I make a suggestion, Quartermaster?" Eve asked, voice light and quiet in a way that James knew was callibrated to avoid disturbing the man. "When all of this is said and done, take the grievance leave from MI6 and take that trip you have been daydreaming of."

"There will be no grievance leave for me, Moneypants, though that is a lovely sentiment. I doubt that that kind of thing will carry over if this lasts much more than a day. Too many people will be dead for having their loved ones close, having them turned, and having nothing with which to blow their fucking heads off." 

Eve let out another low snort of amusement, her dark eyes sparkling as she looked up at James, "Oh, I think I can arrange something, my dearest boffin. Especially if James is willing to help." 

"I would be." James confirmed, "Though my price is the opportunity to escort you through this trip. I'd feel better as your security detail."

Q raised a brow, cracking his eye open, "You would rather trail me around than get the chance to be assigned to sleep with beautiful, deadly women and blow shit up?"

"Well, when you put it like that..." James let it trail off, knowing full well by now that Eve could hear his silent 'yes'. 

"James, you're being very kind to me." Q murmured, voice tight. "Thank you for that." 

James nodded, not willing to shrug off something that had Q's eyes so intent on his features. "You have saved my life more times than I can count, Quartermaster. I wish that I had been here soon enough to save yours before you had to save yourself."

Q's eyes sparked with the understanding of just what James wasn't saying, and Eve excused herself silently, letting Q have a moment, even if it was a moment with the most dangerous man on the planet, "I...I must seem daft, not to mourn him." A line appeared between his brows, a pinch forming on his mouth, "I liked him, once. But you've seen the lab, Bond. That would have been my panic room, and I never even thought to bring him there should the need arise."

"You married the wrong man." James asserted, "Did you ever love him?"

It was Q's turn to snort, tears forming in his eyes, "No. By the time he asked me to marry him, I didn't even really like him anymore."

"You were married for how long?" James asked, squinting at Q in a play of confusion, tempered by the pull of the corner of his mouth. 

"I needed him." Q shrugged, "He took care of me." 

James reached a hand up for Q's hand on his middle, his eyes earnest and so blue it felt like falling into the sky, "You have never struck me as a man that could not take care of himself, Q." 

Q laughed once, a sharp bark that was more an act than James had ever seen him wear. "Do you really want to know? Because it will make me nothing more than a liability, Bond. You have the illusion right now, and it's all I have going for me at the moment." 

James grabbed a hold of Q's hand more solidly, pulling him upright so that he could look into Q's eyes properly, "You are the only person I have ever met who has been able to see through me, Q. You are no illusion."

Q's wrist twisted in his grip, and Q slid free only to unbutton his cuff, James's fingers allowed to feel before he tore his eyes down to see the scars resting there, just barely visible. "Clinical depression. Suicidally bad." Q managed. "Lucas found me...he found me, and got me to hospital. Stayed with me, through it all. I--"

James cut him off, leaning down to press his warm, dry lips to the marks in his skin, taking his hand again, "You have medications."

"They'll run out. The ones we can raid will have a shelf-life." Q swallowed, "I have a shelf-life."

"You're a genius." James told him, like that changed it all, "With access to geniuses. Recreate the formula in the pills."

Q let out a shaky laugh, "That will only work for so long, Bond."

"You think this will last that long?" James asked rhetorically, "Because I doubt the world will survive if it does."

"It's the nature of the beast," Q told him, voice low and rough in a way that made James want to crawl into him and not let go, "that faith is a hard thing to come by with me. Hope is even harder." 

"What about trust?" James gave the question as though it was his answer, "If you trust in me, Q--"

"I trust you, you idiot. I trust you enough that if I can't fight this any longer, it's up to you to make damn fucking sure that our mad little family survives. I have been fighting this for years, Bond," Q said the last harshly, making sure that James was paying proper attention to every word, "for decades. And I don't intend on giving up any time soon, damnit, but I refuse to lie to you now and say that I'm safe. I'm not. I never have been. I never will be."

"You needed stable." James remembered, the words falling from numb lips.

"There are days when it feels like I'll never be happy again, Bond. And days where I can shine brighter than any bauble you've ever seen."

"The nature of the beast."

"I have a favour to ask." Q murmured after a long minute, his eyes finally meeting James's, "I'm rather good at repression. And this...James, don't leave me alone. I can't afford to let myself crumble."

James wished acutely for the most insane moment that he could be a person Q was comfortable enough with to allow himself to fall apart. That he could be the one to piece the genius man back together. "I won't." James managed, his fingertips still pressed against the scars on Q's wrist. "I won't leave you alone." 

Q nodded once, licking his lips as he turned his head, cocking it slightly, "Dinner's ready." He murmured, and on the tails of his soft comment, Alec called just that. Q twisted his wrist out of Bond's grip, pulling him up by the hand as he stood. For a moment, Bond hoped he wasn't going to let go, but as Q went to step around the couch, he slipped from James's hand. Flexing his fingers, James followed his boffin unto the breach; taking a deep breath to ground himself before he could meet Moneypenny's eye. 

~

Garbage bags had been taped over the windows, and the light they allowed themselves after that first night was limited to candles. 

Rosie and Q had taken to experimentation in the lab beneath the house, the secret passage propped open for their collection of agents to come and go, usually with some form of sustenance for the brain trust. Alec had suggested that it was an ingenious way to get them to be waited on hand and foot until Rosie had him stand behind a pane of glass that Q treated with something from a spray can, Rosie taking aim and shooting before Alec could run, only for the treated glass to cause the bullet to simply flatten itself, stopped dead against the glass without so much as a crack. 

"Bloody hell." Alec breathed, eyes wide as he examined the bullet. 

Q and Rosie removed their safety glasses, high-fiving while James and Eve came tumbling down the stairs in a panicked rush. "Success!" Q called, arm slung over Rosie's shoulder as she laughed her bright, tinkling laugh. 

"What...?" James asked, looking from Alec, still examining the pane of glass, to the boffins in the midst of their celebration. 

"I don't want to know." Eve sighed, raising her hands and shaking her head as she backed towards the stairs. "Please don't put holes in my boyfriend." 

"Aw, you do care!" Alec called up after her as she disappeared upstairs, turning to the boffins next, "You created a spray-on bulletproof material." 

James went to look for himself, brows raising as he flicked the bullet off from where it was stuck to the glass. "I should not be surprised." 

"I'm a little insulted by that." Q laughed, "The surprise being there at all, I mean. Honestly, Bond, did you ever doubt me?"

"Honestly, no; what I find surprising is that you managed to come up with something that I hadn't thought of on the list of things you would get to." 

"Oh? What's on the list, then?" Rosie asked, her dark eyes shining with excitement. 

"A fireproof suit that Alec could wear through one of his more explosive ops; maybe a semi-sentient robotic vacuum cleaner?" James shrugged, "This, I must say, is brilliant, though." 

"The windows to the house weren't ballistics rated because Lucas would have noticed, the glass is never quite as nice as the regular stuff. So we can treat it with this." Q explained, handing over the cannister. "It can't be used on anything that needs movement, so do please try to avoid the rails on which the windows open and shut, but it will work." 

James smiled slightly, taking the cannister. "Good work, Quartermaster." 

"Thank you, Bond." Q replied drily, his brows high on his forehead at the praise because, honestly, it was his damned job...or it had been. "Now, talk to me about this semi-sentient vacuum."

Over James's shoulder, Rosie grinned like a cat with an imperial koi, Alec groaning and muttering at the foolishness of giving the boffins any ideas. 

It was a week before they needed to make a raid for any supplies, Eve and Rosie playing paper-scissors-rock to decide which of the two of them would go, and Alec immediately voluntelling James that it was his turn, Alec would make the next run. Eve, shaking her head at her boyfriend as she and James were armed by the half-absent Quartermaster. Alec just smirked, crossing his arms over his chest, "Look, love, one of us Double-Ohs needs to stay with the assets. I'll take this one, as James can't have dinner ready on the table for you when you come home." Smiling sweetly, Alec neatly dodged as Eve threw her lipstick at him; the Double-Oh thankful it wasn't one manufactured by Q. 

"In that case, it should be Rosie and James going if we're taking turns making the other team dinner." Q commented, and Eve had the grace not to even look affronted, shrugging. 

Rosie held out her hands, but Eve shook her head, wrinkling her nose. "It's Alec's idea. We'll give him food poisoning for his efforts." 

Q snorted, shaking his head at their antics, turning for the stairs as James and Eve turned for the door. Eve caught James's eye as he restrained himself from reaching for Q, to see what was wrong. "No wish of luck?" James called out instead, and Q turned on the stairs, a ghost of a smile on his lips. 

"Like you believe in that twaddle." Q told him, his voice so tired the laugh hiding behind it almost non-existent. 

James barely waited until he and Eve had hit the pavement before he started his interrogation, "Tell me about the husband." 

"Cheating arsehole, now deceased. What is there to tell?" Eve asked heavily, sighing as they stepped over the remains of said arsehole. 

"Did Q ever love him?" 

"I...No, not really. Q married...right after he had fallen as low as he'd ever been." 

"Striking while the iron was vulnerable." James muttered, and an indecipherable urge to wish for change welled up within him. "And the arsehole never loved Q, obviously." 

"Q preferred it that way." Eve told him, a touch of severity in her voice. "He's told you the circumstances, so I won't sugarcoat it for you: Q, for much of his life, has utterly hated himself in a way that I think you could appreciate. Q wakes every morning fighting to survive being himself; he goes through this bloody life weighed down with his own dead body, trying not to let it crush him even while he forces himself not to let the strain show. I would hope that you, of all people, understand just how difficult that is." 

James might have stopped short if he were any other man. "He deserves better." 

Eve looked at him, scrutinizing even for the amused glint in her eye, "So what do you intend to do about it, 007?" 

That did stop James short, his brain supplying him with the logical answer as if he'd known it all along. "He...he's--I'm not sure I'm 'better'. He knows the job better than anyone, but knowing it and accepting it in a lover are two different things." 

Eve snorted, "James, take the chance. You need to. The first mention of it, and you're acting as though you want to grow old with him." 

The hairs on the nape of James's neck stood on end, and he reached out a hand, stopping Eve while he listened carefully. They'd only made it about a block, but James could almost feel something off, his hand tightening on the cricket bat Q had wrapped in razor wire. Eve nodded as he glanced at her, her grip going around one of Q's experimental sensor-grenades: one that would tell when one of Q's agents was too close in range, and wouldn't blow up with them in the fallout zone unless overridden by the agent themselves. They had summarily agreed that guns caused too much noise to be of use unless the house itself was under siege; then it wouldn't matter if they used stealth to their advantage or not. James didn't press himself into cover against the wall because he needed the movement to swing the bat effectively, but Eve crept around the corner before he could inch any further, and she shook her head, gesturing him forth. The sight before them was nothing short of horrifying, and Eve swallowed, wrapping a hand around James's arm. 

A still-running SUV had been in a collision; the alley a dead end, though whoever had been in it can't have known that, or had forgotten in trying to escape what ever had been chasing them. A car seat sat half-tumbled out of the door, shredded and covered in blood, and Eve forced herself to take a deep breath, trying not to be sick at the thought of a child in that seat. An arm lay half-crushed between the dead end of the alley and the vehicle, and Eve watched in horror as the fingers of that hand twitched. "We have to get out of here. Now." James murmured, taking a firm grip of her arm and beginning to steer her along. 

It was no use, though: a gun cocked at the mouth of the alley, and as Bond and Eve glanced back the way they'd come, a knife flashed in the half-light. "See? I told you this trap would work. Now, you're going to take us to wherever it is you're holed up, and give us your supplies, or it won't be the zombies what kill you now." The one holding the gun demanded, and James's jaw twitched, his grip on the bat tightening. "You really want to try it, you posh prick?" 

James rolled his eyes, and Moneypenny bit back a snort of derision, glancing at Bond and then back at the gunman. "James, Eve," a voice crackled over the static of the radio still on in the SUV, and James felt a well of pride, "I see you've made some new friends. I wonder if those new friends would be quite so ready to kill you if they knew that if either of you end up with so much as a scratch, they won't be able to hide from me."

James had to bite back a snort of his own, shaking his head as a familiar staccato played through: Q typing. 

"Vatican cameos, darling." Q told them with finality, and Eve burst out with a laugh, grabbing James and ducking away from the mouth between the dead-end and their own alley, a door unmistakably clicking unlocked as every light in the alley turned on, the radio suddenly blaring music from the car. James let out a shaky laugh as he kept up with Eve, racing through the deserted car park Q had unlocked the electric locks of as they both heard shots beginning to go off as a horde descended on the trap and the two men still standing in the middle of it. 

"CCTV." Eve told him, voice tight as they kept running; hoping to get to the other end of the building before anything came wandering into carpark. "The bastard's probably been watching us the whole time." 

"I could bloody kiss him: neither of us are in body armour." 

Eve let out a guffaw, her breath still hard as she and James kept pace to the end of the building, "He'll think of that as an oversight on his part." 

"I'll just have to convince him otherwise." James laughed, missing Eve's wicked grin at the thought of James finally doing something about his attraction to the Quartermaster. "Doesn't Alec drag you on those runs of his? C'mon, Eve, you'd think you were in high heels at this pace."

Never one to back down from a challenge, Eve put on a burst of speed, the door before them unlocking just as the one behind them had, and Eve sent a prayer of thankfulness, knowing that this was something James might've taken for granted; but Eve had witnessed it from the other side enough that she knew what a blessing Q really was to his agents. They didn't slow their pace until they were a block and a half out from the trap; well enough away that the zombies that Q had lured into saving them wouldn't be able to catch up. "James, we need to find a chemist's. I might have once broken into Medical's records: I know what Q is taking." Eve told him, panting slightly. James nodded, his frosty eyes sweeping the area ceaselessly. 

"Let's hope it hasn't already been raided." James muttered grimly, and Eve's jaw tightened, her eyes like flint. "If it has, we may have to double back and steal a car." 

"Driving would attract too much attention. They overturned cars in the swarms." Eve argued, as if he didn't already know; watching the footage with her and Rosie tucked up on either side of him, Alec having watched over Q's shoulder before the man had shown the rest of them. Eve shuddered to herself at the memory. James had sat between the two women, perfectly still as Rosie had twined her hand in his, squeezing tight as they watched the chaos sweeping over the streets. It was a tactical study for James and Q, but Rosie had just watched, horrified, seeking what comfort she could from James. He was more than willing to comfort her, too; watching not only the creatures that had been humans, but the humans as well all go mad and rend each other and themselves limb from limb was not something someone who hadn't been in the thick of battle would ever get used to. For all that she worked in Q Branch, Rosie hadn't ever had to truly deal with the consequences. "Shall we have some fun, 007? Bring Q home something to play with, as well as his medications?"

James smirked, nodding as he guided them down another street and into a Tesco's. It had been barricaded, but James walked around the side until they'd found a delivery entrance, using a piece of the barricade on the main entrance to pry the metal garage door open, his muscles rippling as it groaned and creaked, moving in fits and jerks. "If you tell me to put my back into it, not even Alec will find the body." James warned darkly, grunting under the strain. 

Eve laughed, dropping down to slide under the opening James had managed, rolling out of the way as James rolled under the opening. She flicked on her torch, helping James to his feet, "Talk Q into giving you a back rub for your troubles, old man." Eve murmured. 

"Tempting." James hummed, "I rather think I'd prefer giving him one, though." With a smirk, James moved deeper into the half-dark of the half-destroyed grocer's. "Have him all laid out under my hands, get all that damn tension out of his neck..." 

"Drool later, Bond. For now, we hunt." 

"More gathering, this, but I concede your point." James hummed, thinking over the ways in which they might be able to bring something shiny home for Q. 

James and Eve arrived easily enough; James loaded down like a pack horse, Eve acting as the weapon. Alec ushered them inside, and James barely stopped to allow Rosie to hug him before making a beeline up the stairs for the room he and Q shared, a box in his arms. He found Q ensconced on the fainting couch that he had pressed into service as a bed, Rosie and his laptops both within reach as he curled around a mug with something close to petulance in his eyes, staring down at the mug itself. "Not the right mug." Q muttered, shaking his head as he looked owlishly up at the agent. 

"That I can't fix yet." James told him, bringing the box down and kneeling with it, "But we did get you something to play with, Q." Q sat up at this, a grin taking over his features as he looked at the box, 

"You were serious about that semi-sentient robotic vacuum cleaner, I take it?" Q laughed, clearly delighted.

"I thought that if you could weaponize the thing, it would do some serious damage." James laughed, "At the very least, if you were to also give it flight capabilities, it would make a wonderful drone." 

Q grinned impishly, "I have drones, James."

"Then he can be your companion. Robots can't annoy you unless you program them to, right?"

"Rosie told you the coder's creed: There are no bad machines, only bad programmers." Q slid to kneel with Bond on the ground, the two of them facing each other over the Roomba box. "Thank you, James."

"Can't let you get bored, Quartermaster." 

Q reached for James's wrist, looking him dead in the eye, "Those men today...we need to get out of here, I think." 

"Those men today were quickly and efficiently taught their lesson, Quartermaster." Strategically, Bond knew Q was right, but tactically, Bond's instinct was, above all, to keep the defensible position the house provided. "They aren't a threat, really." 

Q snorted, shooting Bond a look, "Neither would the zombies be, 007. You're the best spy MI6 has ever had, they would stand no match. Yet here we are." 

James cocked a brow, sitting back on his heels, "What would you have me do, Quartermaster? Kill them all?" 

Q had a sardonic lilt to his mouth, eyes tired and dark, "I doubt that would help much."

"Then what would you have me do?" James asked again, leaning into Q's space a little more. 

"Go back in time to warn me?" 

James shot him a look, shaking his head slowly. "You'd have me sectioned." 

Q grinned, a shining and deadly thing, which was James's biggest weakness. "You're probably right." Q allowed, "Time travel is such a tricky beast, I'm not sure I'd be able to predict how I would verify it was really you and you actually knew what you were talking about." 

James narrowed his eyes, considering, "You could always show me that tattoo you've been hiding. The image and location might be proof enough." 

Q raised a brow in challenge, "I have no tattoos, Bond, though nice try."

James smiled softly. "Can't blame a man." 

"I most certainly can." Q rejoined, sliding half-around the box between them until he and James were shoulder to shoulder on the floor, backs against the coffee table. "Why are you being so kind to me, James?" 

"Because I should have been kind to you at the start." James replied, and Q sighed to himself, "You've kept me from dying more times than I'd care to admit. That day at the Gallery? I was dead; I simply hadn't stopped moving yet--and then I end up sitting beside this posh, ridiculous boffin, with a voice that could coax blooms in the dead of winter...and you challenged me. When nothing had tried to get me to move, you challenged me before even bothering to look at me. Do you know how completely that one thing saved my life?" 

Q didn't smile, staring at his hands as he swallowed down his voice and all the ill-advised things he could say, "You were grey. When I walked into the Gallery, I had seen photos of you, and you...you were the sun in every one. But that day? You were grey, like I'd already lost you to the mission, and I knew what...I knew what being grey felt like. I knew I had to try." 

James's fingers brushed Q's, his shoulder pressing solidly into Q's, "You succeeded." 

Q looked over at him, blinking as if he were refraining from making an argument to the contrary. The moment stretched, and Bond fought every instinct he had to keep himself from leaning into the Quartermaster and kissing him as close to senseless as James could manage. Sitting as they were, James could easily imagine the sounds he was capable of coaxing from Q’s throat…but with that came, too, the sensation of being tethered in a way James had never before experienced; bound up in the toss of Q’s curls and the curve of his smile and kept by the gentle hands that could bring the world to its knees, even for as broken as the world had become. Q deserved more than a kiss on the library floor of the house he’d had to turn into a sanctuary: Q deserved more than to have James call that sanctuary into risk with a want he ought not to have ever had. 

“I brought you—“ James cut off as Q plucked the baggie of pills from James’s left inner pocket, as simply as if James had been wearing a neon sign proclaiming where the drugs were hiding. 

Q looked down at the bag with a frown, brows pinched. “You know, this is the first time I’ve held this many. As if I couldn’t be trusted not to use my crutch to kill myself.”

“I do hope, Q, that you mean ‘crutch’ under the parameters of the damage Alec or I could manage with that particular implement: because I don’t see a crutch there, I see a sword.” 

Q looked at him, half-askance. “Is it common for you to get more sentimental the longer you stay out of the beds of the beautiful and bored, Bond?” 

“Is it sentimental to be honest, Quartermaster? Because, truthfully, I don’t see a crutch. I see a weapon—the only weapon you’ve had for years, in enemy territory, with no telling when or what backup will come. I see a man asking for something to use to survive.” Q swallowed thickly, blinking at James as he stared down Q’s doubts. 

Rosie made a small sound from the doorway, and though James didn’t look away from Q, he knew she was beaming under a patina of tears, “I see a badass getting outfit for survival.” She spoke up, and James grinned. 

“Which would make me the Quartermaster for once, wouldn’t it?” 

Q snorted, sounding close to tears himself, and James resisted pulling Q into an embrace; instead helping them both to their feet. Rosie ducked in for a throttling hug, and Q coughed slightly, wincing at his ribs as she squeezed. Over her shoulder, Q nodded gravely at James, whose answering smile was little more than a ghost as he moved to head downstairs and help prepare the meal. 

James knew better than to have fallen in love with Q--but he had done just that, it seemed. As he joined Eve in bickering with Alec over whether or not dinner was supposed to have been ready upon their return, he felt like he'd left a part of himself upstairs with Q, and he was petrified by that sensation. He'd been grey once; he couldn't afford to lose the thing that had brought the light back to him, and it was undeniable that to love Q was to risk just that. 

"You look like you're thinking." Alec noted, "That's _never_ a good thing." 

Eve glanced up at Bond, her dark eyes narrowing and her mouth twisting as she blinked up at him. "He's half-right." Flicking a napkin into place beside each of their places, Eve leaned over the table to look towards the stairs, then ducked back to look the other way into the living room, as much as was possible from the vantage point of the table. "In this case, I feel like you're thinking of wooing a particular Quartermaster." 

"I would offer my support of this, but if you were to ruin him, I'd be forced to help her kill you, so I'm going to remain officially neutral." Alec bantered, ignoring Eve snapping a dish towel at his ass. 

"Make your move, Bon--" 

"I can't." James hissed, voice more vehement than he'd meant for it to be. "This is not any self-deprecating nonsense, Eve, this is real talk: Making a move on Q would be the single most ill-advised thing I could do, because either it would ruin him...or it would ruin me." 

Eve set down a water glass with perhaps more force than necessary, drawing herself up to her full height in front of him until, even at a foot shorter than he was, she loomed, eyes deadly. "Or you could let it ruin you both...and figure out who the fuck you are when you're actually in a relationship built on trust, respect, and love." 

Eve didn't break eye contact, and James was actually beginning to fear her more than a little before Rosie broke in for the second time, and saved him from himself again, "Why is Eve looking scary?" 

"Because she's trying to threaten James into making a move." Alec replied, and James was slightly relieved to see that Q was not on Rosie's heels in the kitchen doorway. 

Rosie scoffed, "I'd try to explain it to you, James, but I'd use higher math and all you really need to know is that one plus one equals two, so just goddamned do it." 

Alec snorted, but was shaking his head slowly, "I'm...a little shocked to be honest." Drying his hands on a towel, Alec regarded Eve and Rosie, "I'm with James on this one. Q just got out of what I would classify as a undeserved relationship--" Eve made a sound somewhere between a squeaky toy and an indignant squawk. 

"You can't be serious!" Eve objected. 

"--and Double-Ohs, James particularly, aren't exactly relationship material."

"Says the Double-Oh in a relationship!" Rosie hissed, the sound of Q coming down the stairs drawing the conversation to a close rather more efficiently than James could have hoped for. 

Coming into his kitchen, Q still looked owlish as he regarded each of them, a crinkle forming between his brows as he frowned. "What's going on?" 

Eve flailed slightly, shaking her head, though she pointedly seated herself as far from Alec as she could, and shot murderous glances his way throughout the meal. James just offered a sheepish wince of a smile, moving to serve up plates and urge Q into a seat. Mentally, James took into account how thin Q had been and how much thinner it appeared he was growing; the sleepy cast of his features versus the sleep schedule he'd gotten the shape of during Q's handling of his missions. Q was close to becoming sick, James felt, and was abruptly presented with the problem of just how he intended to encourage Q to take better care of himself. 

"Alec, tonight you're with me on watch: Q needs the sleep, and he saved Eve and I instead of taking his rest this afternoon." James told the other agent simply, in a tone that brooked no argument. Alec nodded immediately, and Rosie and Eve both looked moderately relieved seated on either side of Q. 

"James, I can't--" 

"You're out-voted." James told him simply, and the other three nodded vehemently. "We can't afford to let you run yourself into the ground, Q." 

"You saved Eve; after dinner, I'm making you a pot of sleepy tea and will put on rain sounds and read you to sleep if I have to." Alec asserted. "Oh, and you saved James, too, I guess..." 

Rosie snorted despite herself, and James shook his head at his best friend. "How did you manage to get into that car stereo?" Eve asked curiously. 

"It was bloody wifi-enabled." Q snorted, "A child could crack the system on those cars, it's ludicrous." 

James shook his head, taking a drink of water, and Rosie's eyes lit up at him, "Tell me about the Aston Martin? Rumour on the street is that you had Boothroyd put in an ejector seat?" 

Back on familiar--not to mention _safe_ \--territory, James gave an honest grin at the memory of what all Q's predecessor to the title had given him over the years. "The ejector seat wasn't even the best part of that car..." 

 

~

James woke violently, his hand going for a gun under a pillow that wasn't there. 

In the dark of Q's library, James's breathing was the only, ragged, sound. As he swallowed down the thick tang of adrenaline in the back of his throat, James blinked himself into place: He was in Q's home, the world had ended, and Q would be in the fainting couch across the room. 

Except that last part was undeniably untrue. The couch was empty and cold, and James mentally went over the watch schedule twice, and came up both times with the assurance that Q was not on the roster. 

Slipping from the fold-out, James held back a grunt at the ache and pull of his joints as he moved for the door as silently as possible. James could hear Alec's bear-like snores from the bedroom; Rosie and Eve were on watch downstairs. There was no light from the guest bedroom, so Q had not taken Rosie's place while she was otherwise occupied. Ghosting downstairs, James was a little startled to realize that each woman was quietly singing along to a softly playing tune, the two voices not unpleasant as he moved instead to the workshop, hunting for the source of the music with the unerring knowledge that he'd find it was coming from Q. 

Q had his tired eyes closed, head tipping back and to the sides as the rest of him moved along to the beat; the movements both jerky and graceful as he danced alone in the half-dark of his workroom. 

This was no simple dance, though; James knew immediately that this was a catharsis, as much as Q would allow himself one. Q was trying to shake the devil from his back, and as he moved, James ached for him to be able to do so. 

James felt no inclination to join him; and though Q had had his eyes closed, and James hadn't made a sound, he knew that Q knew he was there as the song changed, and the dancing, all at once, ceased. 

Q was breathing steadily as a deeper beat began under the pleading vocals of the singer, and James simply watched, waiting for him to turn before James silently pulled Q into a tight embrace, his head ducked against the muscle of James's bicep as his steady breathing caught on the rocks of all that had happened. 

James had promised not to leave Q alone to shatter; he pulled Q in tighter, and hoped that this was enough. James offered his strength to a man whose name he still didn't know; bearing up under the weight of a grief that could lay to waste a foundation of diamonds. Hand shaking slightly, James moved to tunnel his hand into the wild curls at the back of Q's head, holding him as tightly as he dared in the hopes of pressing the pain from his weary bones. 

There were no tears as Q broke down; only the hiccoughing breaths of a man lost on a tide of panic and pain. Q was swaying slightly on his feet, and James wanted, badly, to simply sweep his legs out from under him--but didn't dare. 

Q's hands were freezing despite the heat of his dancing, and as they scrabbled for purchase on Bond's back, his own breathing stuttered. 

Knees finally giving, James took Q's weight to lower them both to the floor, unwilling to release Q for even a moment as Q began to rock just slightly in his embrace. Turning his head into the skin of James's bare chest, James realized that Q was beginning to cry at last, and his heart screamed in his chest in wild desperation to ease the anguish. 

Q swallowed thickly, and James let him go when he pulled away slightly, though death itself couldn't have stopped him from catching Q's tears on his fingertips. Q's features crumpled all over again, and James was seized tightly around the shoulders, with weeping eyes pressed closed against his neck. 

As carefully as if his calloused skin could catch and rip the delicate material of Q's skin, James brushed his hands over Q's back in slow, easy petting; leaking warmth into the growing chill. 

"I'm so sorry." Q finally managed, and James huffed, hugging the man tighter. 

"Don't you dare." James's voice was gruff, and Q shivered into him as James pulled a gentle hand through Q's hair before settling on the nape of his neck with a sureness that James didn't know the provenance of. "Never apologize for this." 

Q gulped, and James stole a kiss to Q's curls while he still could, wishing that he'd brought his blankets with him. 

Emerging from his spot in Bond's throat, Q looked up at James with eyes so achingly tired James felt as if he'd do anything-- _anything_ \--to chase the shadows away. 

But James knew, too, that chasing away the shadows was not always the answer. 

Carefully wiping the tracks from Q's skin, James leaned in to rest his forehead against Q's. "I've got you." 

Q made a broken sound, hands twitching uncertainly before they settled on James's forearm, a thumb pressed delicately to his pulse point. "I'm--" 

"Don't. I'm here for you. You don't have to apologize to me for bringing me here; I came here on my own, and I stayed because I have your back, and I won't leave you. You can cry; you can scream and throw things. I don't care. I just want to be here for as long as you want me near you." 

A look of anguish passed over Q's face, there and gone. "That's a tall order." 

"I'm an annoying git, it can't be that tall." James joked, and Q huffed something between a sob and a laugh, shaking his head minutely. "Are you ready to go to sleep now, Q?" 

Q licked his lips, and James hoped it wasn't obvious when his breath caught against the urge to kiss those lips. They sat with their foreheads still pressed together, the act of holding onto each other more intimate that most of the embraces James had ever had. "I think so." 

James brought them both to their feet, and though it killed him to do it, he let Q go long enough to turn off the music, offering him his hand when Q circled back. Apprehension flashed in Q's eyes, but he took the proffered comfort without a comment, letting James lead him all the way to the library with that connection in place. 

Q sighed to himself as he made himself as comfortable as possible; long limbs bunched on too narrow and too short a frame. James lowered himself to the floor in front of the couch, sitting in such a way that, were there more light to be had, he would be able to look Q in the eye. "Aren't you going to bed?" Q asked on a whisper, as if the rumble of Alec's snoring wouldn't easily drown them out from all ears. 

It was as easy as breathing to get to his feet and cross to the pull-out, then back to the spot he'd taken on the floor, laden now with his pillow and his blankets. Eyes adjusting, James could make out the pucker of confusion on Q's features as James threw his pillow to the ground so that, were it not for the height afforded by the couch, he'd be laying his head beside Q's. "It's good for the back to sleep on the floor from time to time, and I don't fancy pull-outs much, if I'm being honest. I once had a mark try to fold me up into one and empty a clip into it: not the best of memories." 

Q made a choked sound of disbelief as James flicked out one of his blankets and lowered himself back down on top of it, laying on his back as Q moved to look over the edge of the couch at him. "Not all five-star hotels and gourmet chefs, then?" 

"Oh, no, Quartermaster: The life of a field agent is fraught with the perils of bed bugs and ice-cold camembert." James chuckled, sounding warm. 

Q gave a dramatic gasp, and they both laughed in whispers. James could practically feel Q sober, however, and he reached up, tracing over Q's arm with a gentle touch before Q moved so that their hands wrapped around each other. "I'm...scared." Q finally admitted on a whisper, and James squeezed gently, rubbing his thumb over Q's knuckles. "I'm scared the world won't go back to the way it was...won't find an equilibrium..." 

"We're here." James told him simply, "At the core of things, that is the most steady knowledge I've allowed myself to have in years. Even if we lose all grip on what we were; I intend to hold onto that." 

Q scoffed, and James couldn't stop his smile as Q sang in whispers the old refrain that had been sung by the trench-trapped troops of World War I to the tune of Auld Lang Syne, "We're here because we're here because we're here because we're here..."

The lament was somehow hopeful from Q's lips, and James smiled in the darkness, a soft acknowledgement passed between their clasped hands in the dark. Shifting, Q lowered their clasped hands to rest on James's chest, laying on the couch on his stomach easily, his free arm curled beneath his pillow. 

"Thank you for being here, James." 

"Always, Q."


	2. Chapter 2

James and Q sat on opposite sides of the house, both tacitly ignoring the wheezing moans of the creatures outside as they went from house to house, trying to force the doors in on the ones they found locked. James listened intently on the soft drone of Alec comforting a frightened Rosie, the weight of the gun in his hands as comforting to him as the presence of the bat leaning against his thigh. 

At the back of the house, Q was armed with his flamethrower and a collection of ball bearings Rosie and he had assured the agents would be more dangerous than they looked. James had found himself both unspeakably curious and unaccountably nervous of what the boffins had managed to come up over the weeks they’d spent sequestered in this house. 

It had been weeks now, and without a sign of what had caused the infection to start, or how it could be ended. If it had not been for the regular updates from Q-Branch, James would have feared that they were the last of the world left. As it was, the world was in what James could only call a shambles. Reports were that there hadn’t been a single population that hadn’t been hit, though the theories of what could have reached around the world in such a way was a free-for-all that James had immediately regretted asking after. That the infection had begun and propagated so suddenly had Q theorizing after a bioweapon, but dispersal of such a thing to only portions of a population, even if they were majority segments of the population, made the normal dispersal methods unlikely. Rosie and Q wanted to find some of the original infected to attempt to trace a commonality, but there was no hope of such a thing when they had no support to fall back on. 

The military had been all-but wiped out, after all; and though there was no real way to take measure, James knew Six had to have been brought similarly low. 

Q had been prepared, though, James had to admit. Q had had a team in place in what had been a supposedly-defunct nuclear power station before the Incident had even begun; guarded by Double-Ohs on leave and field agents and safely sequestered already. Q had laid in emergency rations and medkits and had kept a panic bag of clothes and supplies for each of them save James; and when faced with that lack, Q had made due until they could find something better. 

James stayed steady as the moaning got closer, ears pricked for movement on Q’s side in case the infected were trying to get cleverer. James grit his teeth as bodies were thrown against the reinforced door, even though the impact didn’t so much as rattle the frame. James knew that door would hold against even a small explosive, but it made him no less uneasy as the attempts continued. 

In the dark behind him, Q’s breath was quiet and steady. James measured his own breaths against the sound, and settled into the knowledge, with no shred of doubt, that he was the most dangerous thing for miles, even with Alec upstairs. 

James and Q were strictly there as insurance that nothing that broke in would survive long enough to get to the others; but it was an empty gesture, James knew, because the likelihood of something breaking in was infinitesimal. 

Both of their breathing stopped as, all at once, the crashes against the door and barricaded windows ceased. James could almost feel the tension ramping up in Q as they sat in the silence that descended, the ominous wait so much worse than anything that the attack could amount to. 

Q jumped, startled, as what had once been a potted plant was launched against the living room windows, but James simply clicked the safety off, and waited. 

The noise of the horde moved on, and James let out a slow breath before he silently rose to his feet and crossed to his Quartermaster. 

The pale cast of Q's features in the diffuse light of the kitchen appliances reminded James of a ghost, his eyes large and shocky. James found Q's bony shoulder in the darkness, squeezing softly, and Q nodded at the silent question--and nearly leapt out of his skin as an impact rattled the door this time. Bond whirled, levelling the gun at the door, and Q shuddered, his breath let out in a sigh that did sound shaken. 

"Go." James urged on a breath. If he were to see their sanctuary broken into, he'd rather face it alone than face the possibility of witnessing the loss of yet another person he cared for. 

"Not going to happen." Q breathed back, voice dangerous in the dark. 

"Q--" 

"No, James." 

An impact to the kitchen window had James even more desperately wishing it were Alec or even Eve standing with him than Q, but Q did not flinch again. 

Reconsidering his stance on leaving the city in favour of finding a farm somewhere in the country, far away from the population of infected, James continued to match his breathing to Q's, and continued to wait. 

Aching to go on the offence, James grit his teeth in the dark and let the long minutes tick by before he relaxed his stance, Q's tension easing as his did. They could not afford the attention that would be drawn to defend beyond their doorstep; curious, Rosie and Q had set traps in front of three of the abandoned houses the next block over, just to see if the infected were clever enough to think that perhaps the defended point was the point worth going after. 

James and Alec had both loathed it when Rosie and Q had been proven right on that hypothesis. Moneypenny had been resigned: it was, after all, just their luck that the zombies of reality were much cannier than the zombies of lore. Q had taken to reinforcing their barricades then, until the act of keeping watch was little more than a nod to the paranoia of all present. So long as they didn't make themselves known, they would be safe enough. 

Eve had caught the pattern first, in their raiding runs for supplies: houses marked with a smear of blood invariably held a gruesome tableau of victims fallen under the hunger of the infected, but were rarely if ever checked again; houses torn through, but left unmarked were regularly returned to, as if the infected expected the homeowners they had not found in evidence to return at any time. It was chilling--but it was useful. 

While there were few houses like theirs, unmolested by looter or infected, there were enough that their barricades did not constitute an anomaly, not really. James could hope that they would be able to get away with caution and care to keep away the creatures that had been human, once. 

Q's fingers gripped James's wrist, and James shook out of his thoughts, into the dark and the silence. It had been long enough that the stragglers--the stubborn--had to have given up as well, and James nodded to Q in the darkness, knowing without seeing that Q nodded in return and moved to reclaim his seat. The chill of Q's clever fingers was worrying, but James had prepared for it; moving back to his seat, James snagged the blanket he'd been using as back support, and draped the soft fabric over Q's shoulders with an easy flick of his wrist. Q startled slightly, then laughed in whispers. 

"Yes, this is a look that strikes fear into the hearts of my enemies: grandmother-chic with my knit afghan..." 

James smiled, running a hand over Q's shoulder. "With a good cuppa in reach and a flamethrower handy? Envy of the grans, Q. Envy of the grans." 

The shoulders shook gratifyingly, Q shaking his head as he chuckled silently. "But I've no cuppa, James! Mores the pity." 

James shook his head at the put-on pout in Q's voice. "Didn't Rosie make you a full Thermos of tea before we took up our posts?" 

"James, that was _hours ago_!" Q hissed, dramatically scandalized at the implication that tea could last that long. James snorted, sinking into his chair lazily, as if he wasn't listening like a fox on the hunt for any sound of one of the infected, come back to call. 

The horde had been doing sweeps of the neighbourhoods, and while on normal night, they often shifted the kitchen table so that it was in relative view of both the front and back doors, playing cards by the light of glowsticks while the night passed without incident. But with the horde becoming more and more organized, and their section of the world the next to be swept, James and Q had opted to sit through this night properly. 

It was nearing dawn when Eve's tread on the stairs broke James out of a reverie of trying to puzzle out why something Rosie had mentioned about bird flu had niggled at him. Behind him, Q would have his eyes closed, a meditation creation flowing through him while he had the enforced stillness of keeping watch like this. He would open his eyes to a world he would change with whatever he’d seen while his eyes were closed. 

Looking up at her over his shoulder, James took note of the remote set to her features; the contemplation spelling certain doom with that particular frown pulling at the corner of her mouth. “Alec?” James asked quietly, and Eve reacted to audio input as if she had touched a live wire. 

“Up with Rosie. So was I, but Rosie is a cuddler in her sleep.” 

James snorted, shaking his head as he stretched his legs out in front of him. Rosie had had too close a call the week before; one of the infected had filed her fingernails to sharp points before she’d been infected and the keratin had brittled. When Rosie had been cornered by the woman on her foray with Alec, she’d been badly scratched, and as a result she’d been badly rattled. When the timeline for the threat of infection had lapsed, and a collective sigh of relief had been sighed, Rosie had attempted to sit watch through the night, only to panic badly when James had padded down to retrieve a glass of water in the night. 

Rosie abhorred this perceived weakness, but with three field agents and Q insisting, she’d agreed to allow herself to be taken care of. 

Most nights, Q sat with his boffin, dosing in an armchair and claiming that he truly slept. James knew him better than that by now; knew this meditation was a way of catching rest, and that by manipulating Q into sitting watch with him, James had bought them both time to rest while the others worked on whatever needed doing. If James were right, the main goal of the dawn would be to put a further barricade on the ground-floor windows and make contact with the team in the Bradwell plant for a sitrep on their supplies and their requirements. Q-Branch had made a delivery of hydroponically-grown veg that they had converted the firing range for; a set-up that Q had cordoned off his late husband’s home office to recreate. 

Meat was becoming increasingly thin on the ground, and though James and Q hadn’t discussed moving since Q had saved Eve and James, it was food for thought to go to the country and try to find a farm. 

Animals seemed to be safe from the ravening hunger of the hordes, and Q had puzzled at that one for days, until it was akin to bashing his head against a wall. 

“Will you eat before you head upstairs?” Eve asked the room at large, though she was only likely to get a response from James. 

“I won’t, but Q ought to.” James replied, ignoring Eve’s flash of concern at his refusal. James and Alec both had eaten well; experience with starvation and a very active lifestyle had necessitated that—but more and more, James and Alec were consciously eating less and less, doing their level best to make sure the food was carefully rationed for the others. 

“James and I will have some porridge, thank you, Eve.” Q spoke up, prim and in control. “And with the infected growing increasingly nocturnal, we may have some good news regarding our stocks of meat and dairy: Q-Branch has found a cluster of working farms and have talked 004 into getting out there and bringing us supplies. He’ll now be stationed there for protection of the asset.” 

“Please tell me you didn’t learn that through your meditation, Q; I’ve managed not to truly fear you up to this point.” Eve pled, and James scoffed in surprise. 

“You don’t fear him?! It’s _Q_. I’ve been terrified since around the time he told me to catch the damned train.” 

Q snorted, stretching slightly before he stood, turning to face the other two at last. In the dim light filtering through the cardboard taped to the windows, Q looked exhausted, and James ached to take him in his arms. James had found himself wishing at every moment for the easy affection Q and he had built in the night. Logically, James knew very well why he oughtn’t even let that comfort bloom between them: he was beyond damaged goods, and Q deserved much more than an old and worn-down killer. 

_You aren’t a killer, James,_ Q had urged in the dark as James had told him about Vesper and whether a killer like him had deserved to be betrayed like that; to have his heart lead him astray on the one time he followed it, _You’re a soldier. As am I, after a fashion._

Eve moved to head into the kitchen as Q continued to stretch, and James was there to steady Q when he wobbled. Q smiled gently, leaning into him for a moment. Eve brought down a section of cardboard to let the light of the day in, and with the sudden flood of gold, Q seemed to glow. “Ta.” 

James smiled in return, and the moment stretched in his mind like pulled taffy, the temptation to kiss Q pulling taut in James before the ruckus of Alec coming down the stairs broke the thread between daydream and reality. 

When James and Q had finished with their breakfast, James followed Q wearily up the stairs, the food making him more full than he’d allowed himself to be for a long time. Q reached back, and James took his hand automatically, the strength in those hands utterly comforting as he was drawn into the quiet, cool darkness of their makeshift bedroom. Q turned to him as he shirked his trousers without a trace of artifice or hesitation. James pulled his shirt over his head without even thinking to wonder at just how comfortable with each other they’d become. 

“You don’t have to do that, you know.” Q told him suddenly, and James sat on the edge of the pullout, wondering what it was he didn’t have to do. “You and Alec are assets; neither of you should be forcing yourselves to go hungry.” 

James was surprised that he was surprised by that; he’d thought he’d been more subtle than that. “We aren’t the assets to protect, Q.” 

“Neither are we, 007.” The use of the callsign was a calculated move, and James waited for the reasoning. “Equals, James. All of us. If we want to survive, we need to play on equal ground.” 

James couldn’t help but scoff, “You and I are not—“ 

“I’m not a bad shot, but I’m not you.” James pursed his lips, “And in this new world, what use is a hacker over a hunter?” 

“An inventor—an innovator. Someone who will help to rebuild the world is worth more than—“ 

“No.” Q replied simply, and nodded to the door as he pulled on his sleep pants, “And you can ask the others if you don’t believe me.” 

James grumbled though he had no argument to make, and Q was up and over to him. James was nearly knocked off-balance by the look in those grey-green eyes, but Q caught his hand. 

“Thank you…for taking care of us. But don’t take care of us at the cost of damaging yourself, James.” James shifted their hands until his fingers locked with Q’s, and Q leaned into that connection. 

For long minutes, they stood close enough to share air; their hands clasped tightly, as if the tether between them was strengthened by the touch. Finally, finally Bond leaned forward to kiss Q’s forehead, giving a small squeeze to his fingers before he pulled away. “We should sleep.” 

Q’s eyes flashed with something James couldn’t parse, but he nodded and moved to his nest on the fainting couch, beating his pillows into place with perhaps a bit more force than necessary. James moved before he could stop himself, catching Q’s wrist and drawing him around. 

“What have I said?”

Over the weeks, James and Q had adopted an openness that precluded all façade: when one of them asked a question, the other would answer with honesty or not answer at all. Q swallowed, not meeting James’s eyes for a long moment before his jaw hardened, his chin tilting up, “It’s not what you’ve said, James. It’s what you seem to refuse to _do_.” 

There was no answering that; no excuse he could give for his behaviour, because he knew he'd behaved like a lovestruck idiot, but had refused to act on any part of it, like a total prat. 

They stood there for long minutes, colour slowly blooming high on Q's cheeks, but not from embarrassment, James knew. "You're right," Q finally muttered, breaking their gaze at last, "we should sleep." 

Q turned back to his nest, arranging pillows and spreading the blankets out evenly as if James wasn't still staring at his back, trying to think of a way to ease the tension riding on Q's shoulders now. "I..." 

"Don't worry about it, James. Spotted boffin isn't your usual type anyway." Sliding into place on the couch, Q took his glasses off before he could meet James's gaze again, turning so that his back was to the room, and James with it. 

James was full of words to negate that charge; brimming with the urge to say that he had never wanted anyone as much as he wanted the boffin in question. But if he wanted to keep Q safely out of his grasp, James couldn't give voice to how badly he wanted to kiss every trace of insecurity out of Q's mind. 

"Goodnight, James." Q sighed when James still hadn't moved. 

"Goodnight, Q." 

James didn't want to move back to the pull-out; but he knew he wouldn't be welcome to lay his head beside Q's couch as if he could deserve to lay beside the man for real. As he pulled himself into the blankets, Q sighed and turned back over, his unfocused grey-green eyes on James. "I'm sorry." Q whispered. 

James coughed a laugh, "Q, you have nothing to be sorry for...This is on me. All of it." 

"You--" 

"I'm sorry, Q." 

"I don't...I don't mind the flirting, James. Or...or having you close. I just. I need to get it through my thick skull that it doesn't mean anything." 

James got out of bed, taking his blankets and his pillow with him and taking a seat as he had, in the correct distance that Q's appalling eyesight could see him clearly. "It does mean something, Q." James told him softly, because in the library, they had no secrets and they told no lies, "I feel more for you than I have for anyone else...in a long time, perhaps ever. But I have a bad history of losing those closest to me, and for as close as I've let you come, I can't imagine what it would be like for me to lose you after letting you any closer." 

Q's brows furrowed, his hand reaching for James's, touch easy between them. "And I thought I was fucked up." 

Bursting into disbelieving laughter, James ducked his head, "I don't know...what to do." 

Features softening, Q gave James's hand a tiny squeeze, "We'll figure it out." 

"I can't...I can't lose you." 

"You came closer to losing me through misunderstanding than you have through misadventure, James." Q pointed out softly, "And while I understand your urge to protect me, I think you forget what exactly I'm capable of." 

"I doubt I could ever truly forget, Q." 

Q grinned, shifting on his couch to bring himself closer, "Perhaps not." 

James leaned his shoulder against the edge of the couch, and Q's hand released his, reaching to card through James's hair. In the month of sequestering that had passed, James had stopped shaving much, and had let his hair grow out slightly; not quite trusting Alec or Eve with helping him to shave his hair, and not caring anymore about looking scruffy. Now, with Q's clever fingers combing over his scalp, James bit back a purr of pleasure and convinced his hand to catch Q's wrist and arrest the motion. James brought Q's hand down, and he opened his eyes to meet Q's as he pressed a careful kiss to the swell beneath his thumb. 

"If this were the real world, this would be easier, wouldn't it?" Q asked. 

"If this were the real world, Q, I'm not sure we would have made it here." 

"Were you only interested once I'd proven myself to be as deadly as you require in a lover?" Q teased, and James chuckled. 

"No, I think perhaps my interest brought me that night, more than anything else. No, I think I would have an easier time of repressing it if you hadn't gotten under my skin; if I'd been in a position to continue to refuse to let you know me, or to let myself know you." 

Q stroked a hand over James's cheek, "I'm not going to push you. But I'm not going to stop doing this, either." Q told him, emphasizing his statement by sliding his hand back into place in James's. "I don't think you'll be the death of me, James. I think the death of me will be a Dalek that I've built, most likely," Q paused as James laughed at that mental image, "but even taking into account how likely I'd be to lose you in the real world, James, I'd still choose to have you while I could, and to enjoy the time we spent together, than to deny myself something for fear of losing it." 

James's breath caught on something like a laugh, and he moved to kiss Q's knuckles. "Food for thought?" 

"Just promise me you'll think about it. And that you'll tell me what your thoughts are." 

"I promise." James breathed, the vow coming easily because Q was the one person he'd ever felt truly comfortable talking to. 

James nuzzled Q's hand once more before he released it, laying himself down with a groan of pleasure as his back stretched itself out over the floor. 

When James woke that afternoon, Q was sitting up, head laid on his knees as he hugged them to his chest and stared past all seeing. It was a look James was familiar with, having worn it enough himself. Q had had another nightmare; a bad one this time. Reaching up, James could wrap his hand around Q's ankle, tugging slightly as if the touch wasn't enough to get Q's attention. "Come here." 

Q blinked a few times as if the words didn't compute, but he unfolded from the curl, and James grabbed his pillow, laying it beside James's as Q stepped carefully over his legs and dropped down beside James on the floor. 

"What was it?" James asked quietly, bringing Q's covers with him and laying them out over him as he folded in on himself next to James on the floor. Q simply shook his head, and James laid an arm around his waist, hand rubbing at his back, "Did you get any rest?" 

Q shook his head again, taking a breath this time, "I can't go to sleep again." 

James nodded, thoughtful as he studied the lines of Q's face; the pinch at the corner of his mouth and the tight curl of worry at the corner of his eyes. "I won't make you." 

Q reached out as if he was scared of his welcome, touching James's chest with fingers that were icy cold, and James only barely managed not to flinch at the contact. Sliding the arm he'd wrapped around Q under the blankets, he found Q to be cold everywhere, and the warm touch of his hand on Q's back sent Q shivering desperately. 

Scooting over and pulling Q to him, James wrapped himself in Q's chill, breathing out a gusty sigh as Q hesitated, then clung to him. "I have you." James whispered, comforting as best he could. James cupped a hand in Q's unruly curls, tucking his face into the crook between shoulder and neck, biting back a shiver of his own at the temperature of Q's skin. "I'm not going anywhere." 

Throwing his blankets over Q along with Q's own, James tangled their legs together, bleeding warmth into Q as if Q was fully hypothermic; as if he _needed_ it. The truth was, James knew; it was James that needed to hold Q this close, that needed him warm and alive in James's arms. 

"How did you get so bloody cold?" James sighed after a long moment, when Q's extremities felt less like ice against his skin. 

"Poor circulation. It made keeping still in Q-Branch rather difficult, for how cold we had to keep it."

James grinned, "You should've said; I know several tricks to staying warm without rumpling a good suit." 

Q snorted a laugh, shaking his head as much as he could, tucked against James as he was. 

"Why do you keep it so cold in here if you get so cold yourself?" James asked, but the answer was obvious. 

"I like to have my nest. I like waking up warm in a cool room, even if it makes it hard to get out of bed in the mornings." 

“You’re a bit of a hedonist, aren’t you?” James rumbled a laugh, and Q chuckled, tucking his face further against James’s skin so that his lashes tickled at him. Q’s clever hands ran over James’s side, trailing over his back to trace one of his scars with gentle fingers. James held carefully still as one of the most tender and sensuous explorations of his body took place. Q seemed to know the placement of the scars better than James did; his fingertips playing over cuts that should have been stitched, nerves severed and left deadened. Q's breath billowed over James's skin, his mouth just a hair's breadth from contact, and James forced himself to simply enjoy the closeness and refused to let himself wish for more. 

"I try to find pleasure where I can." 

James was silent to that; considering. Q had trapped himself in a loveless marriage, and had done battle with himself, every day, to find the will to keep going. James didn't know exactly what that was like, he was coming to realize; his own issues were not with battling himself to stay alive, and had never really been despite the argument there was to be made that he was suicidally reckless. But James did know fighting to stay alive, and knew that the pleasure he'd so recklessly sought between being shot at was undeniably what had made it worth it for him to keep fighting...along with his sense of duty, but that didn't count, James decided. 

"Lucas hated it..." 

"I never met the man, and it's rude to speak ill of the dead, but Lucas was a sodding prick." James grumbled, firm in this belief. 

Q laughed in whispers, "He was. And it's not speaking ill of someone to speak true, I don't think." 

James smiled slightly, rubbing a thumb under the riotous curls, along the hairline at the back of Q's neck. "You deserved better." 

"Better won't have me. Something about being concerned for my safety during the damn apocalypse." Q quipped, and James poked him firmly in the ribs, the hiss of tickled laughter and squirming he received in response bringing a bigger smile to James's face. 

"The prat could provide you with stability; I categorically do not do stable well." 

Q snickered, "True." Q's fingers traced along a strip of road rash that had left minute scars along his hip and side, humming slightly, "But you are far more understanding than he was...even if I'd given him all the answers, laid it out for him, he'd've still wanted his wilting flower whom he'd saved--" 

"You're no wilting flower." James told Q with every ounce of confidence, "Any one to look at you should be able to comprehend that." Q's breathing stuttered, and James ran a hand down from the back his neck to the small of his back, knowing that with those words, he'd painted himself into a logical corner. 

"I'm not going to." Q reminded him softly of his promise not to push, "This is your battle to have with yourself; I can't make this choice for you." 

"You sound as if it was a battle for you as well." James murmured. 

"It was. Your life has been in my hands countless times, James. If I were too slow, or distracted…or let you become more valuable to me than the mission, then your blood or the blood of innocents would truly be on my hands.” Q hugged James tighter, “I had to come to terms with whether or not I’d be able to handle that.”

“How did you?” 

“The fear of losing you in the field isn’t gone: if the world were to suddenly right itself tomorrow, I would fear losing you, just as I always have for all my agents. The fear of putting you ahead of innocents; of England and the mission, though? That simply required a change of perspective. For one thing, you’d do what you damn well please in that situation anyway; and for the other, it would be a bigger betrayal to you to save you over saving the lives hanging in the balance than anything else ever could be. You are, above all, a good man, James.” 

James held Q tighter, feeling more exposed to Q than he’d ever been to anyone else. “I’m not sure the rest of the world would think of me as a good man.” 

“What the rest of the world thinks of us doesn’t bloody matter and never ought to. What matters is the lives you’ve touched and how you’ve touched them.”

“Doesn't assassinating someone count as touching their life?”

“You took out twelve people on your op in Kuwait. You saved the lives of the thirty teenagers in the trafficking ring at that time…but you also saved the next thirty, and the thirty after that.” Q murmured, “By my math, thirty is more than twelve and the good outweighs the bad, James.” 

“I wonder, sometimes, how many people I’ve killed that never knew what it was they were doing; that simply took the job to support their families--how many families I've left struggling." 

"You left them struggling, but alive." Q reasoned. "Those people would not have been saved." 

James and Q both knew that that was not necessarily a step-up from dead in some cases, but James wasn't about to argue the point. Q settled against him fully, and James let himself enjoy the sensation of holding someone just for the sake of holding them. "You fear for all your agents...but I'm your favourite, right?" 

Q laughed, as James meant him to, and a soft thump of a knock came from the door just before it opened without either of them responding. 

Eve and Alec stood in the doorway, both looking slightly shocked to find James and Q ensconced on the floor, but both edging towards gleeful laughter. "Sorry to...wake you?" Eve questioned, "But we had a delivery from Q-Branch, you may want to come down." 

"Good job, mate." Alec got in as Eve physically pushed him out of the way. "I mean James; Q, you can do better." 

Q roused himself from James's neck finally, growling slightly at Alec before he collapsed back into James's arms. "I've no bloody idea where my glasses've gotten to." 

James smiled at the grumpy expression on Q's face, stealing a kiss to his forehead. "I'll find them." 

Q groaned as he stood and stretched, yawning. "How did you sleep, James? Remiss of me not to ask." 

"I slept like the dead, Q. I'm sorry I didn't hear your nightmare." It was odd for him, not to have heard the change in breathing of someone he was going to consider his bedfellow. "I sleep better when it's beside you." 

James caught up Q's glasses, handing them over rather than trying to place them properly. Q blinked behind the lenses, looking somehow even more tired with them in place than he did with them off. 

"Eve and Alec have watch tonight; I'll sit with Rosie, you need to _sleep_."

Q snorted, "Good luck with that.” 

They didn’t bother to get fully dressed: James squeezing into one of Q’s t-shirts, and Q finding a pair of slippers under the mound of blankets. James wondered what it would take to convince the others that nothing had happened, and then decided he didn’t bloody care what the others thought of it. James caught Q looking at the stretch of his shirt over James's shoulders, and resisted the urge to tease him for it, along with the urge to flex and make it a better show. Q's cheeks were softly pink, and James knew he'd be welcome to kiss the coy expression from Q's face, but he refused to do something so reckless when he hadn't found his way through the mire of his feelings. 

That alone gave James pause; a hesitation to do what he wanted when it was a welcome gesture was not something he'd ever done before. 

James caught Q's hand, silently interlocking their fingers and squeezing gently as Q led them downstairs. 

"Smells like..." Q began, then his eyes widened, a smile blooming over his features. 

The scent of pasta and garlic was heady after weeks of survival rations and dried goods. "I love it when Q-Branch gives treats." James murmured, and Q laughed as he pulled James excitedly downstairs. 

Rosie beamed at them as she was setting the table, Eve and Alec in the kitchen. "I made you a tea, overlord! We have proper milk!" The chirping excitement brought a laugh out of Q, and James grinned at her, leaning in and wrapping her into a one-armed hug with his free hand. Q ducked in for one of his own, releasing James to properly hug her and share in her joy at having real milk and real food. 

The joy didn't quite reach Eve and Alec, though they made a good show of it. Unfortunately, that wasn't enough; the excitement pouring off of Rosie was quickly dampened then drained, and James looked between the couple standing over a pot of boiling pasta and the tiny boffin suddenly looking just as pale and drawn as she had been since she'd been attacked. Q seemed to know what it was without having to ask, "Bradwell needs help." He surmised. 

Bradwell nuclear plant had been officially defunct for years, but in truth Q had reopened it, his personnel living and working in its confines, protected by field agents and Double-Ohs who needed a bout of downtime to recuperate. It'd been a clever way to take Q-Branch off of the main power grids should someone gain control, and it'd been powering both the Branch and Q's house throughout the Incident, but James didn't want to know what would bring the team currently residing in Bradwell to needing backup. 

"The infected have figured out that the plant's still operational, of course..." Rosie began, and looked as though she'd rather be stranded in the middle of a horde than continue. 

"There's a certain section of your people in Bradwell who have come to believe that the infected are the next evolution of humans." Eve spoke up. "Last night, they compromised the entire operation." 

Q was grinding his teeth, apparently well aware of just who it was they were very carefully leaving unnamed. "So the bastard finally did go fully mad, then." Q growled, shaking his head. 

"You put someone you knew would be a liability in Bradwell as a exclusionary measure." James deduced. 

"Not realizing I would come to depend on Bradwell as we have, yes, I chose to get a liability out of my hair instead of sacking him and raising a mutiny with the other senior staff members." Q looked back to Rosie, "What do they need, and how come we aren't immediately giving it to them?" 

"They need protection and supplies to rebuild an entire section of their barricades. Q-Branch has sent in their collection of Double-Ohs." 

"Does that leave Q-Branch unprotected?" James asked. 

"No, not by a long shot, but the best bet we'd have is with Q in place as the head of our proverbial snake." Rosie replied before Q could. �  
"So we get Q to Q-Branch, and James and Alec get to go to Bradwell." Eve reasoned, looking slightly ashen. 

"I don't like this." James growled, knowing that everyone already knew that. He turned to Rosie, "When?" 

"Tomorrow at dawn." Rosie replied, "The good news is that the infected can't handle daylight well, so we should be good to get to Q-Branch unmolested." The bad news was that Bradwell and Q-Branch were nowhere near each other, and Alec and James would therefore have to leave Q, Eve, and Rosie to fend for themselves. 

A muscle in Alec's jaw was twitching, but neither he nor James said anything about the growing ire in their chests. "Is he still alive, or did his attempt to welcome a parasite with open arms get him killed?" 

"He's alive, unharmed, though the Double-Ohs aren't happy about it." Rosie told him, and both Double-Ohs growled their agreement. "Q-Branch is waiting for you for judgement." 

"He's best qualified to run the damn..." Q cut himself off, grinding his teeth again and curling his hands into fists, "who else do we have?" 

Rosie shook her head, and Q sighed. “Why do we only have one man qualified—“ Alec began. 

“Because this was supposed to be a stepping-stone. We’d only just begun the project; I was still looking for qualified people…” Q sighed, looking so achingly tired that James was tempted to simply pick him up and take him back upstairs, “he was unstable, severely displeased that I’d been promoted over him…I rushed the project to get him out of the main Branch and to give him something to do.” 

Alec’s expression changed, as if he recognized the man in question, “You’re talking about Spencers, aren’t you?” 

James stiffened slightly; Spencers had nearly gotten both Alec and he killed. While Q had a habit of mildly berating them for destruction of their given tech once safely returned, Spencers had gone so far as to deny them both needed support during ops because he hadn’t agreed with how they’d used they'd been getting the job done. 

“If Q had gotten rid of him, others with seniority would have revolted.” Eve soothed, as if she’d had this very argument with Q, and knew his reasoning now by rote. 

“Apparently, that was a miscalculation.” Q growled, looking utterly disappointed in himself. 

“This is why I’m so relieved I get to just shoot people, and to hell with the office politics.” Alec sighed. Rosie chirped a tiny laugh, looking as though she was picturing Alec involved in office politics, and just what that would undoubtedly entail. 

"Mmm, except now you and James have to go shoot people because of a blunder caused by office politics." Q growled. James caught his hand again, pulling Q's attention to him like it was a physical thing. 

"It's not your fault, Q. And it was a tidy way of getting him out of the Branch without letting any of the Double-Ohs put a bullet in him." 

"Though I reserve the right to put a bullet in him once we get there." Alec volunteered, brandishing a sauce-covered spoon to emphasize his point. 

"Noted." Q sighed, resigned. James squeezed his hand softly, caught by the look in Q's eyes; the disappointment and despondency he saw there curling unease in James's chest. 

They sat down to their meal too silently for it to be as celebratory as it should have been to have fresh food there. Neither of the boffins seemed to want to eat, though Eve and James were not about to let either of them leave without doing so. Rosie and Q, James had learned, hadn't really eaten enough before the Incident began; now, their eating patterns were both worse. Though Rosie, at least, tried to force herself to eat even though she was rarely hungry, Q neglected himself until James was scared the man would simply fade away before his eyes. 

Worried, now, that Q was going to neglect himself further without anyone there to brow-beat him into eating or trying to sleep, James was determined to make sure Q got at least one good meal. 

It was a part of the depression; the lack of sleep, the lack of eating. James knew the symptoms in an obscure way, but was coming to know them as they pertained to Q now that he'd gotten the chance to see it. Q tended towards fasting, as if his body wasn't a machine worth fuelling. James wasn't sure, but he had the suspicion that Q rarely recognized hunger, or realized when he was ready to drop from exhaustion. 

"Fuck it." Q growled after a few silent minutes, standing up and heading for what James had learned was the liquor collection. "Red, Rosie?" 

"Please, boss." Rosie replied, standing to get down glasses as Q began disgorging the selection onto the kitchen counter. 

"James, I have bourbon or whiskey. Lucas was a heathen." Q reported. 

"I'll have what you're having, Q." James told him with no small amount of amusement. 

"Vodka?" Alec asked hopefully as Rosie nearly fell into the freezer retrieving it. 

"I'm with Alec on that." Eve answered Q's silent question. 

They hadn't had alcohol since the beginning of the Incident; it hadn’t seemed like a good idea. Now, though, Q looked stonily determined as he poured and mixed. Knowing that comments about putting a bad idea on top of a bad idea were best suppressed, James accepted his drink of red wine, his and Q’s glasses poured from another bottle than Rosie’s had been. 

Rosie and Eve shared a look at this, and James surmised that Q had been saving that red for something special. With the state of his marriage, James had to wonder line Q had been fed and expected to fall for when the bastard had been sneaking around. James clinked his glass against Q’s, the bouquet of the red delightfully complicated. 

“When the world turns right again, boffin, you and I are going to go house-shopping.” Alec promised, eyes raking over the kitchen appraisingly. 

“You hate your estate agent. Mine, at least, has stopped politely trying to pressure me to find a wife and settle down.” James scoffed. 

“I went with him for the last round of viewings, James; his agent nearly expired from joy before she realized I’m not pregnant.” Eve groaned, shaking her head at the memory. 

Alec was grinning, and as he offered his hand to Eve, she deigned a tiny smirk. James was relieved to see that simple expression of affection between them. After he’d sided with James during an argument of whether or not pursuing Q was a good idea, Eve and Alec had seemed…distant from each other. That simple gesture, James hoped, meant that he hadn’t ruined their relationship, too. 

“I appreciate the offer, Alec, but I’ve already found my next place, whether the world goes right again or not.” Q told them, sounding deeply amused. “Lucas’s father left me their country house on the Sussex downs.” 

“I would say Sussex would make one hell of a commute, but you…you don’t intend to remain Q if the world turns right, do you?” Eve asked as if she was a little scared of the answer. 

“I doubt I could continue to perform as they need me to. We can say this for Lucas; he kept me grounded.” 

James wanted so badly to tell Q that he didn’t have to give up being Q, but he found that the words rang of a lie if he were to try to tell him that he could help Q find his balance. He could certainly promise to take care of Q; he had every intention of doing just that for as long as Q would let him…but balance was not something James had ever been accused of. Sussex could be lovely, James reasoned; and while he doubted Q would fully pull himself from the trappings of MI6, James could easily see himself taking his mandatory downtime on the downs, if he was welcome to. 

“Why Sussex?” Alec asked, looking slightly grumpy. 

“Why not Sussex?” Q replied easily, shrugging a shoulder, “The house is set up with a chemist’s lab, though it’s a very old one, and I could keep bees if I so chose, which I like the idea of. The library is downright full of treatises on everything from cigar ash by brand to the presence of the Magdalene has an apostle.” 

“It sounds rather picturesque. James murmured, and promptly hid behind his glass when Eve and Rosie turned a matching set of looks of furious betrayal on him. 

“It is. I loved that house more than anyone save Lucas’s father; that’s why it was given to me.”

James smiled softly, and his hand found Q’s under the table, “I’d hope to be a member of your security detail when the time comes to move Britain’s greatest brain to the country.” 

“I’d hope you’d help me fix up whatever this mess has done to the place.” Q grinned impishly, and James laughed, rubbing his thumb over Q’s knuckles. 

“Well, I suppose if I can’t help talk you out of it, I can help you fix the place up.” Alec offered. Q’s grin widened, his shoulder settling against James’s as they drew closer. 

Drinking and eating merrily now, the lurking pall of separation was kept firmly ignored. James traced the line of Q’s tendons in his inner wrist, the warm flush of blood beating beneath Q’s pale skin grounding as he let himself want what he could’ve had. They adjourned; Rosie, Q, and James heading upstairs while Alec and Eve quietly bickered over the dishes. 

The sun was setting when James and Q bid Rosie good night, at her insistence, and James and Q turned for their room. Q was flushed from the wine, though he showed no other sign of intoxication. When James turned to him, his skin like roses and cream and his smile hazy with a happiness he evidently refused to let fade away, James could barely restrain himself, ducking in to kiss Q properly for the first time. Q let out a squeak of surprise, but quickly eased into the gentle caress of James’s lips. 

James kept it gentle, kept it almost nonexistent, until Q’s arm banded around his shoulders, his lithe body pulling James’s in until they were fully pressed together. The kiss turned desperate then; Q’s tongue teasing at the seam of James’s lips for entrance, and James’s hands finding Q’s hips and lifting, turning and pressing Q against the shelf next to the door. Q gasped as he wrapped his legs around James’s waist, his cheeks even brighter now, James noted, as he bent his head to lick at the delicious cut of Q’s collarbone. 

It was then that they heard it. 

Not the cheers of their fellow housemates, which both of them easily knew were more likely than not; it was a voice. 

There was the familiar groaning of the horde…coming closer, if James wasn’t led astray by their rough breathing in the darkness…but above that, much closer, was a desperate, winded voice crying for help. 

Q’s head turned to the blacked-out window, still suspended against the shelf in James’s arms. “That…doesn’t sound right.” Q breathed, listening. 

James and Q looked at each other as the voice cut directly for their front door, and James released Q’s legs, the two of them moving to intercept Rosie before she could fall out of her room to try to let whoever it was in. Q all-but tackled her, wrapping her in his arms and sitting heavily against the door, taking her down with him. “The voice isn’t right, Rosie. Listen.” James urged, “It’s not human.” 

Rosie struggled, “It is! It is, James!” 

“It’s not, Rosie.” Q insisted quietly, “I promise.” 

Rosie struggled, but Q wasn’t letting go. James moved past them, racing down the stairs. “Do not open that door.” James caught up the cricket bat, and Eve flinched back, though James had no concern that she would have opened that door. Eve turned and moved to cover the back door, leaving Alec and James at the front. 

“Please! Let me in!” The voice was high, wheezing, and Alec’s jaw hardened. “They’re coming!” 

James let out a slow breath. “What’s your name?” He yelled, and the only response was a bang against the door, then a blood-curdling shriek of rage. From upstairs, James heard Rosie let out a small cry, her breathing turning to sobbing. “Maybe it’s for the best that we’re leaving.” James growled, and Alec nodded a silent assent. From the top of the stairs, James could hear Q urging Rosie up and back to her bed as the siege of the house truly began. 

 

~

Dawn saw their motley crew exhausted, but ready; Q’s workshop packed into bags for Q, Rosie, and Eve, and their few remaining supplies ready to go with James and Alec. Q had sat with Rosie all night as the horde had done their best to smash in the windows and doors, screaming in anger and using rough, wheezing voices to taunt and threaten. 

James regretted that there had been no spare moment for Q and he to talk; the ghost of their kiss a memory James would say he treasured. As they readied to make their goodbyes, James trailed Q upstairs, finding him standing over their makeshift bed with an empty look in his eyes, as if there was too much for Q to put to thought. “If we survive this,” James began, “I’d like to take you to dinner.” Q turned, a quirk of a smile pulling at his mouth. 

“Oh? Did you have somewhere in mind?” Q asked, his tone light enough that James knew they were playing; that Q wanted him to pretend. 

“I’d say the best restaurant in town—my place…but I don’t want to oversell my skill in the kitchen.” James murmured, and Q’s mask of joviality fell. James plucked Q into his arms before he could see Q’s struggle with the fear and sadness, but it was very nearly worse to hold Q as he clung so desperately to the façade of normality. 

“I…You won’t want to hear this, James, but I love you.” Q admitted muffledly, the words spoken into James’s chest. 

“I love you, too, Q—“ 

“Bastian.” Q admitted, voice rough, “Bastian Gabriel Carter.” 

James pressed a kiss into Q’s curls, “Bastian…”

Q’s clever fingers curled into James’s shirt, pulling them tighter together for long moments, before Q had to let go. James urged Q’s face up with a gentle touch beneath his chin, fingers trailing over the cut of Q’s jaw and the slope of his throat. “I’ve equipped you with a few treats.” Q told him, clearing his throat to centre himself, even if he wasn’t ready to unwind his arms from around James just then, “Enjoy them.” 

James stole a kiss to Q’s forehead, “Thank you.” 

They separated finally, but James caught Q’s hand, the two of them moving easily caught in that connection. Eve offered a tearful smile as Alec released Rosie from a hug. 

The five of them opened the door, shoving aside broken wood and shards of pottery. Moving as silently as they could, James and Alec cleared the yard, neither looking back to nod the go-ahead to the others. The temptation to follow the boffins and Eve was an itch settled between James’s shoulder blades, but he knew that to follow them, Alec and he wouldn’t make it to Bradwell until the next day, and Bradwell was the greater priority. Alec seemed about as please about that as James was as they moved through the destroyed streets of the city, half-glad that the infected had found that sunlight—even the watery half-sunlight of London—sped up the process of decay. Q had figured that the virus was trying, as all viruses did, to infect more hosts, driving the infected hungrier and hungrier in the quest for total dispersal. 

James had been armed with his gun and Q’s flamethrower any way; the newly-infected more likely to be active in daylight. As they walked through the abandoned city streets, James could see true corpses: a woman likely crushed in half by an overturned car; the charred remains of what James assumed to be the driver of the burnt out lorry lopsidedly melted into what had been an upscale grocer’s, laying thirty frantic feet from the rig. They moved silently through this mire of chaos and suffering, neither Double-Oh blinking at the carnage that the Incident had wrought. Perhaps they had not seen worse all at once, but James found himself remembering the worse he had seen over the years. 

Movement could be heard as they passed a school bus, and James shared a look with Alec, neither of them willing to investigate if they didn’t need to. Skirting the bus, Alec huffed as a familiar groan came from it; the infected, watching them just beyond their reach. 

“I imagine it’s like dangling a filet mignon and a cheeseburger over a vat of acid, in front of a starving idiot.” Alec muttered tightly, thumbing the safety off as the bus shook with impact against the rear emergency exit. 

“Don’t be so disparaging of yourself, Alec; you’re not just a cheeseburger—you’re chips and a pint, too, at least.” 

Alec snorted, stepping back around as they passed out of easy range of the bus. “So you and Q finally—“ 

“No, unfortunately not. We might’ve last night…” 

Alec actually dropped his stance, half-turning to gape at James. “You were on the floor together.” 

“He was cold.” 

“You…had that long goodbye…” 

“We talked about it, certainly. But Q and I never got to…”

“Knocking boots?” Alec supplied. 

James cringed slightly, and he grunted, shaking his head. 

“If I may ask…why the fucking hell not, James?” 

“You know why, Alec.” James growled, and Alec frowned, “The reasons stand.” 

“You’re daft, just FYI, but let’s explore those reasons, shall we?” Alec sighed, shifting an overturned shopping cart; the sound loud in the silence. “You don’t want to start a relationship because…?” 

“Because Q doesn’t deserve to lose me, and I don’t want to even think of losing him.” 

“So we’ve got your abandonment issues; good to know. What about your self-esteem problems?” 

“He deserves better than some bloody murderer—“ 

“James, dear, he _is also_ some bloody murderer.” Alec sighed, “Remember when you were in Vietnam and the radicals managed to get you before you managed to get them? Remember me coming in, guns not blazing, to save your ass? The reason my guns weren’t blazing was because Q had already gotten to them—all of them.” 

James didn’t argue the point; he found he really couldn’t. It was well-known that Q could easily turn something as benign as a toaster into a weapon of mass destruction, even from across the world. 

“You do also realize that your penchant for sleeping your way through a mission doesn’t bother Q; and even if it did, you’ll hardly be getting much action with the world gone to shit.” Alec huffed as they scaled an overturned, half-barricaded lorry, half-expecting to find a threat on the other side. “I’m fairly sure that if you were honest with him, he wouldn’t care if you had to lie back and think of England.” 

James huffed a laugh as he landed lightly beside Alec on the tarmac on the other side. “I don’t know that I’d be okay with it…” he admitted, and Alec looked unsurprised. 

“You do have a loyalty thing.” Alec reasoned on a sigh. “You know he’d loathe it if you were to quit on his account.” 

James shrugged, the shift of the flamethrower’s rig on his back fluid enough that he wasn’t worried it’d been damaged. 

“But now if Q’s retiring…” 

“Alec, I’m more focused right now on making it to Bradwell before dusk.” 

“Bugger that.” Alec scoffed. “I’d rather psychoanalyze you. I’m bored.” 

James growled, rolling his eyes. 

“Now, what is the reasoning to your falling in love? Finally, I might add. All of MI6 has had a bloody betting pool going since he committed treason for your sorry arse.” 

James was silent for a long time, but he knew 006 well enough to know the subject would not simply be dropped. “He’s so bloody strong.” James finally admitted, and Alec nodded like he understood completely. “I went to him because I couldn’t imagine getting through this without him.” 

“And if you’d found him infected?” That one, Alec let go of when James didn’t respond. “Out of curiosity, did he tell you his name?” 

“He did…” James murmured, realizing that Alec had to know, Eve and Q being friends outside of work and Q’s husband likely knowing Q’s name. 

“Alaric Quinn Blackshear being an alias,” Alec sighed, “I think that makes you the last man alive to know his name, besides the man himself.” 

James managed to keep his expression neutral as they warily swept over an open square, the feel of it all too convenient, and all too trap-like. 

“If I guess it…” Alec started, grinning, once they’d gotten back to the carnage and chaos. 

“You’ll have to guess all of it for me to confirm it…but this would be a good test.” James laughed. 

“Let’s go alphabetically. Aaron?” 

 

~

James threw down his hand triumphantly, and the giggle that met his ears almost cracked him, "You're giggling. Does that mean you have something better than two pairs?" He asked leadingly, putting on a show like he was scandalized. 

The four-year-old girl sitting on Alec leaned down to whisper to the Double-Oh to confirm what it was she had. Alec was laughing as he whispered in her ear, nodding. James knew already that what Ellie had was, in fact, four of a kind; Alec had murmured it to her the moment she'd drawn it, and James had nearly laughed that as a team, the four-year-old was outdoing the poker face of the Double-Oh. "I have four pair!" 

James bit back another bout of laughter, "Very good hand." She jumped slightly, remembering to set down her hand. 

Two weeks after arriving at the Bradwell facility, James and Alec had been adopted by Ellie Angelique, one of the eight orphans brought in by their lead maintenance officer. Her ex-husband had ran the orphanage before the Incident began, and he'd turned. Maggie, the oldest of the children at the home, had called the first number she could think of, reaching perhaps one of the only safe havens the children could possibly find. Maggie had adopted 004, who had gone with their maintenance specialist to retrieve the children. 

"So do I win the lollies?" Ellie asked, confused. 

"Yes, you win the lollies." Alec confirmed, "Except the cherry one." 

Ellie wrinkled her nose, cherry her least-favourite flavour. She handed it over without a qualm, leaping down and running with her prize with a tiny, victorious battle-cry. James cracked, snorting into helpless laughter as Alec did. 

"That child will be the death of me." Alec managed between gasps for breath. 

"You love every minute of it. Moneypenny's going to have competition when it comes to your favourite female." 

"Do I?" Eve's voice cut through the rec room, and Alec lit up in a way that caught James's breath in his throat. "James, how _could_ you let this happen?" She smiled, giving a small leap into Alec's arms as he ran to pick her up and twirl her. 

Eve walked with Alec hand-in-hand back to James, Eve ducking to peck a kiss against his cheek. "Hello." 

"Hello, dear." She murmured in his ear. She sat, Alec sitting close, and James could read her well enough to know that past the joy, there was a pain Eve was carrying. 

James didn't ask; didn't want to crack the happiness that cocooned Alec and Eve at their reunion. But his eyes did stray back to the door, as if Q would magically appear there for him. Eve's hand slid in his as if she could read that thought, giving a squeeze. "He's safe?" 

Eve nodded, but a piece of her happiness cracked. "He's fine..." 

She trailed off for long enough that Alec began to read her, too, "It's Rosie?" 

Eve's breath shook as she nodded, and James braced himself as if for impact. "Rosie...didn't make it to Q-Branch with us." Eve told them on a whisper. "She died saving Q." 

Alec sat back, his features going slack with grief. "No..." 

Eve's hand in James's tightened, the grief shared, "Q was cornered...I was pinned down too far away to help. Rosie went into the swarm of them, screaming that they could not have him, and would not have me. She took out four before they overwhelmed her, and Q...Q took out the rest. He...we tried to get her back to Q-Branch, to help. She wasn't bitten, we thought if we made good time we might be able to save her." 

James felt suddenly, utterly cold. He and Alec had spent their trek joking, talking. At ease. When they should have been with Eve and the boffins; should have been there to prevent what had happened. 

"Where is Q?" 

"In Q-Branch. I wouldn't've left him..." 

"But?" Alec urged. 

"But he thinks that it's possible a piece of his tech was stolen to engineer this virus. And he thinks he might be able to stop it." 

It was like James had been hit in the solar plexus, the wind leaving him completely, "How...would his tech have been stolen?" 

Eve's face hardened, "I need to see Spencers." 

Alec and James exchanged a look, but neither of them said a word as they got up in unison, turning for the door to escort Eve to Spencers's holding cell. The Double-Oh on guard duty simply nodded to them; the Double-Ohs had come to an arrangement once Alec and James had arrived, that none of them would harm Spencers for the simple reason that they all wanted to kill him, so none of them would get to. 009 left Alec, James, and Eve to check in on their prisoner, each expecting a crazed monster, but finding an affable old man. 

"Oh, so lovely to see a proper lady!" Spencers beamed at Eve, and James could feel more than see her shudder. "But surrounded by jackals...tsk, tsk." 

It was a split-second decision, and in that moment, it was as if the three of them were of one mind. Eve shot doe-eyed looks of empty fear over each shoulder at the two men, looking at Spencers as if he were the first to understand her fear of her companions. 

Alec and James knew how to threaten with little more than a glance, and they both immediately exuded the danger they really posed. Eve smiled gently, her voice dangerously kind, "Are you alright, Dr. Spencers?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back by popular demand. 
> 
> Thank you for all your comments and kudos and encouragement. This fic has been kicking my ass for five years trying to teach me how to write it. I hope that it's been worth the wait.


	3. Chapter 3

It was a simple choice: Q could shut down the virus--and the infected would drop dead with it; or Q could attempt to find a cure. 

It had been two and a half months since the Incident had begun, and most of the world had fallen. 

James, Alec, Eve, and Q sat on the roof of the Bradwell power plant, watching the sun rise. None of them had slept; none of them had eaten. Q had barely spoken, and Eve hadn't been able to stop talking for the first few hours. 

The losses were piled high in each of their minds, even as those they'd saved slept in the building below. 

The other survivors in Bradwell seemed to know to stay away from the meeting of the four on the roof; the Double-Ohs intimidated by Alec and James just as thoroughly as the boffins had been. Maggie and Ellie seemed to be the only two immune; Ellie too sweet and innocent to fully comprehend, and Maggie simply too tired to care. Q and she had looked at each other with a kind of understanding James loathed, because it spoke of shared pain. 

Ellie was curled up in the bunk given to Alec and Eve, safely asleep. James wondered if there would be some kind of protocol to adopting her into their little family; if the world would still work after the mess. 

With more than half the human population infected, James had to wonder how it was that they'd made it as far as this. The mechanics of the thing had been all too simple; a contaminant released into populations of birds--something that could be spread through simple contact with the dander of a bird, which in the dust and mess of a city like London, was all too easy. The only saving grace had been regular flu vaccinations; for best results, the last three years worth of strains. The virus had been half-biological and half-mechanical; a ticking timebomb of germ warfare that was triggered by Q's stolen tech...but could also be stopped using the same avenue. 

James knew what it was that Q was going to choose, though it made the choice hard to know just how few and how scattered the survivors were: Down in the plant, the minions of Q-Branch worked to contact those who might still be living, while there was still a chance. James knew Q would want to find a cure, if only to set everything to rights again--but he also knew that Q would choose not to risk the lives they'd chosen to protect. 

They had sat on that roof, watching the infected try to pound down the barricades with brute force. 

They had sat on that roof, and listened as the virus hijacked the voice boxes of the infected, their cries not quite right as they pierced the air. 

They had sat on that roof, waiting for the world to end so that they could start anew. 

Q pressed a button, and every infected in range dropped like the corpses they truly were. 

 

~

"You saved the world." James murmured, when he and Q were alone walking the streets. 

James carried with him the audio equipment programmed to send the signal that would neutralize the virus; Q carried supplies for them both. 

Neither of them were really sure just how they'd managed to talk Ellie, Alec, and Eve from coming with them, but James was thankful for it. Q still hadn't really spoken to anyone; talking to Eve, he'd been mute since they'd lost Rosie. James hadn't known the boffin for nearly as long as Q had; had not been with her through nearly as much, but he knew that Q's grief wasn't something she would want. 

Q looked over at him, the look in eyes speaking volumes in reply to the sentiment that Q had been any kind of saviour. 

"Your tech was stolen, Q. MI6 was meant to be safe..." James was still growling like an old dragon that it hadn't proved to be as safe as it'd been meant to be. "It's not your doing, this. Not even tangentially. The smart blood was to be a tracker in the field; it was not to be a vehicle for bio-terrorism." 

"I should have known what it could be used for." Q coughed the words, his voice as if he'd been screaming for days, not silent for weeks. 

James took what he could get, "How could you possibly have known that it could be used as a trigger?" A muscle began dancing in Q's jaw, but James only let him stew through that one for mere minutes, "Your people--the people you _inherited_ from the previous Q...you had no way of knowing that Spencers would be so twisted." 

"I should have seen it." 

Suppressing the urge to grind his teeth, James paused, and the action forced Q to turn to him, if only to stay within the bubble of safety the audio equipment provided. "Fine, you should have seen that your biggest dissenter was compromised without being in direct contact with him. You should have anticipated your tech being stolen by a mad man with access to mad men who would attach to it a virus unlike ones humans have ever withstood before. You should have known that Rosie would give her life for yours--because that's the one you're really carrying in there, Bastian...that's the one that's really hurting. You're bloody brilliant: you know every argument from both sides, I'm sure. But the one you need is the one you're avoiding. So say it. Tell me that you wish she hadn't saved you. That you wanted to die in that swarm of infected and would have happily done so if it'd saved Rosie and Eve!"

James had taken a step forward with his last words, and Q flinched away as if physically terrified and ready for flight. 

"Tell me...so I can tell you that Rosie gave her life because she would have rathered you'd lived than to have lost you when she could have stopped it." James's voice went low and rough, and Q shuddered, his lashes wet and his breathing a painful, hiccoughing gasp. James pressed forwards, and Q didn't shrink from him this time. "Even if Rosie hadn't loved you like a brother; if she'd just been another minion and you were the overlord, untouchable, she would have saved you. Do you know why?" 

Grey-green eyes overflowed, and James had to steel himself against taking Q in his arms; it wasn't time for that yet. He had to get through this, first. "Wh-Why?" Q finally managed. 

"Because you're good in a way that makes you worth saving. Worth loving. _Worth giving anything for_." Q scoffed through a sob, but James didn't back down as he inched closer, barely a foot between them now. "You're the only one I could imagine spending my apocalypse with, Q." James told him, voice laughing, and Q shook his head grudgingly, his features pinched for the pain of breathing. 

"I'm so tired, James." Q finally whispered, and James pulled Q into his arms at last, ducking Q's head against his shoulder. They were still hours from their destination, and it could be days until they were safe enough to actually rest. Q snuggled into his embrace for long moments before he slowly released James, leaning his cheek into James's palm as James reached up to cup his face. 

"I know you are...but we're together; we're going to get through this." 

Thumb tracing one of the bruise-like shadows under Q's eyes, James pressed a soft kiss to Q's cheek, wrapping his arm around Q and turning to their path. Q leaned into him just slightly, and James hardened his resolve to carry them both to safety no matter what it took. 

"I've got you," James murmured his reassurances while his protective streak purred for the pleasure of holding Q close, "you'd have to kill me to get me to let go..." 

"And your specialty is resurrection," Q chuckled softly. "Even if I killed you, you wouldn't stay dead long." 

James ached to kiss Q again; wanted to breathe in the scent of his hair, and memorize the stretch of his pale throat with his tongue. "What can I say? I'm a glutton for punishment." 

Q smiled, "Good. Lord knows I'm punishing enough." 

James compensated as Q stumbled slightly, his mind spinning out options for getting Q safely resting. 

Turning around would've been the fastest option; going back to Bradwell would offer them safety and rest, though James knew that Q itched to escape from the gaze of his underlings; the imagined judgement that had had Q spiralling with the knowledge of what Spencers had done, and the list of things Q should have done or noticed in order to stop it. James knew that that guilt was something he was going to have to fight against; something that Q needed help to defeat, and James was readying himself with a steel that could drive a feather through solid marble.

"Talk to me, Bastian." James urged, pressing a kiss to the curls over Q's ear as they passed into the carnage of their destroyed city. James yearned to take away Q's feeling of responsibility; knowing that the guilt riding Q's shoulders was unwarranted, but wasn't about to abate. 

"What would you like to hear, James?" Q asked tiredly. 

"Tell me about Sussex." James urged, voice quiet as they moved around a destroyed news stand, what James assumed was its proprietor crushed next to it, trampled. 

"Sussex...we could keep bees." Q offered, "The last full-time kept bees...they made the most wonderful mead as well." 

"You mentioned something about a chemist's lab?" 

"Yes...the house, thankfully, was never declared a historical site; I'd intended to build a garage onto the place for larger tinkering." 

James dragged a fallen shop sign from a relatively intact-looking car, but the remains of three infected came into view within its confines, already twisted and very much dead within the confines of the car long before James and Q had come with the disruptor. "Think we could build a car once the garage is up and running?" 

James had very carefully chosen his wording there; the offer was for them both to work on, to spend time together and create something. Q looked over at him, features softened, and James put on his old, cocky smirk as if the reality of spending quality time simply hadn't occurred; he was only after the car. 

Q chuckled, shaking his head, and they pressed on. 

"Yeah, we can build you a car." Q murmured quietly. "I...I'm sorry for--" 

"Q," James cut him off, voice steady and patient, "you've nothing to be sorry for." Q opened his mouth to protest, but James shook his head. "I'm not telling you this simply to feed you a platitude, Q. I'm not the only one who believes you're not at fault--" 

"And I'm not the only one who right blames me for all of this, James."

"What did you do? You created a piece of tech meant to help your operatives in the field." Smart blood had sounded like a bloody nuisance to James, but he supposed that he was exactly the reason it was being created. "You were robbed of this--" 

"I should've bloody protected it better!" 

"Why? You created an injectable tracker, Q. Your software was completely secure--the hardware would be useless without it. And what's more, you were robbed by someone _on your team_ , which you should have been able to trust." 

Q scoffed loudly, "You say trust as if that's something either of us could have afforded to have!" 

"I afforded it without issue, Bastian. I trusted in you--why did you think I showed up that night? Why do you think I started falling in love with you?!" 

Q stopped short, looking at James as if the aching exhaustion was only getting worse. "You misplaced your trust...if I'd been better at protecting my tech; if I'd bitten the bullet and sacked Spencers, damn the consequences...then the world wouldn't have fallen prey." 

James viciously shoved past the anger, knowing that if he wanted to get through this, it had to be done with a level head, "You're not responsible for the poor choices made by your predecessor. And your tech was safely locked away in the belly of MI-fucking-6. You had no way of knowing that Spencers would take it and find someone to twist it; it was harmless until a daft asshole got his hands on it and made it dangerous." 

Q took a slow breath, his lashes a dark smudge over the shadows beneath his eyes. "I wanted to sack him." Q admitted, "After what he did in Bolivia...leaving you without support like that..." 

Bolivia had been years ago; well before Q was Quartermaster. James's brain turned over, and he had to fight a laugh. "It was you." He accused gently, "It was you that opened the cell doors. You set off the fire systems. You got me out." Q didn't meet his eye, fidgeting slightly. "How much trouble did you get in for saving me?" 

"I didn't get caught." Q huffed, and James couldn't help himself; he ducked in, pressing a kiss to Q's cheek with a reverence he once would have vehemently denied and run from. 

"Thank you." James murmured. 

"I just--" 

"You saved my life. You went against all protocol and you made sure I got out of a torture situation with minimal fuss." James hummed, raising his left hand and tugging back the sleeve until a curl of white scar was visible, standing out against the lingering tan of his skin. "They tried to sever my tendons. Would have permanently incapacitated my left if I hadn't made it out when I did." James reached for Q's hand, placing his fingers on the scar. "But because of you, I made it out. I made it to safety and help, and they were able to reattach the tendons and fix the nerve damage." 

Q blinked slowly, his fingers tracing lightly around the scar. "I just did my job." 

"No, you did much more than that." James told him. "You went against your job--you've gone against your job over and over to help me. So tell me again that I shouldn't trust you." 

Q licked his lips, rocking back on his heels slightly and forcing himself to look away. "I should have--" 

"I should have known about Spencers causing you trouble and put a bullet in him." James replied evenly. 

Q slid his fingers over James's arm to his hand, wrapping their fingers together. They continued on, though James knew that Q's guilt was by no means gone, and Q had to know that James was by no means done fighting it. 

"Tell me more about Sussex." James urged gently, "Will we have many neighbours?"

"No, we'll be fairly secluded." 

"So I can try to talk you into sunbathing with me should the weather permit." James teased, and Q barked a laugh, shaking his head. James grinned as Q's hand squeezed his, the two of them moving comfortably as ever and making steady enough progress that James wasn't overly concerned about making it to their destination. 

"Did you end up using the exploding pen I slipped you?" Q asked curiously. 

James chuckled, "I'm saving it for a special occasion." 

"The end of the world as we knew it isn't special enough for you?" 

"Not nearly." James told him, voice utterly fond, "I'd rather we test it together." 

"How romantic." Q purred, laughing as James winked devilishly over his shoulder at Q. 

"Do you think Ellie will let Eve and Alec adopt her?" 

"I doubt she's going to give them much choice, though she does also adore her new Uncle James." 

James laughed, but for as picturesque as the image was of Q and he on the Downs with a child, James wanted (selfishly, he knew) to have a chance at the honeymoon glow of happiness that time alone with Q would bring. He wasn't sure either of them were cut out to care for a child--and he wasn't willing to risk finding out. 

"They'd've come with us though; I doubt it'll be long before they're making their way to visit." Q pointed out when James had let the silence stretch perhaps too far not to indicate some form of regret. 

"Alec and Eve as parents seems inadvisable." James mused. 

Q stopped as if that thought was only just fully registering, and the look he threw at James was enough to have the agent burst out laughing. "Ellie'll learn how to hot wire a car, turn a toaster into an incendiary device, and generally wreak havoc before the week is out." 

"She'll love it." James said with no small determination. 

"Did you and Alec really teach the four-year-old poker?" Q questioned, the tinge to his voice that spoke of a headache only slight under the amusement. 

"Of course. We were going to demonstrate for her what a poker face is and how to use it before Eve showed up. Now she's going to learn...I don't know, probably several ways to kill me." 

Q scoffed, "While I agree with you that Ellie would be likely to succeed where Moneypants failed, I doubt you'd be their first target." 

James had to silently agree. If it were up to him, his first target would be the remainder of the cell that had taken the stolen tech from Spencers and created the virus. If he didn't have Q; if it was simply his calling to his country, James would have hunted them down, no matter where they ran. Spencers didn't have much information on them, other than the insane conviction that they were good men and did right by the world--it was a token of just how much James had mellowed in his years that he hadn't simply shot Spencers with that insistence. Q-Branch was hunting the perpetrators down, but it wouldn't be 007 or 006 they sent once they'd found their prey. R, Q's official right-hand boffin, had gotten a dangerous tone of voice when the report had been made regarding the information Spencers had been coerced into providing. R would make these people regret twisting Q's tech, if only for the fact that it was Q's, and Q's people were loyal. 

"What about your things?" Q asked suddenly, pausing. His gaze was on a building just visible over the city block, imposingly tall. It was James's apartment building. James hadn't been back since before the Incident began. 

"I don't--" 

"You need clothes at least. I know you hated wearing Lucas's things." Q insisted softly. 

"I find that I don't want to go back for any of my suits, and I don't own much besides. We'll have to find a shop and see if they haven't been completely raided of my size of jeans." James told him, smiling slowly and wolfishly. 

Q smiled back, a look in his eyes that James couldn't quite read, "I like the idea of you relaxing, James." 

"I'd say the same of you, Q, but I think we both know that your head is one not easily put at ease." James murmured, “So I’ll have to get creative about finding ways to relax you, won’t I?” 

“I can think of several just off the top of my head.” Q offered, voice gone slightly husky. “Does this mean you’ve come to a decision?” 

“The second I kissed you, Q, I’d come to my decision. The world’s ended…I was never much for denial or repression of my desires, so why not let myself be happy and make you happy?” 

Q paused, squinting at James suspiciously, “You talked to Alec, didn’t you? That’s almost exactly what Moneypants told me he said.” 

James barked a laugh, nodding, “Yes. Alec wasn’t a supporter of my getting into a relationship with you…not until we properly talked.”

“Oh? What did you tell him?” 

“That I’m terrified of hurting you, and even more terrified of losing you for starters. Alec heard enough to recognize something about how he feels for Eve.” 

Q was quiet for a while, contemplative as they worked their way around the destroyed school bus James remembered from his trek with Alec. “We’re making good time.” Q noted. 

“It’s the good company.” James purred, “Once we reach your place, we’ll take refuge there for the night, and try to find a vehicle to get out of the city tomorrow.” 

“It’s rather a shame we don’t have quite the same issue of over-compensation that the Americans do; there will likely be no Hummers for us to press into use as tanks.” Q noted. 

“I’d ask about getting back to Q-Branch, as I’m sure you’ve got an actual tank lurking down there somewhere, but I’d rather we make our way out of the city than head further in.” 

Q chuckled, shrugging a shoulder to indicate that he would neither confirm nor deny the charge that Q-Branch owned a tank. "Something small for maneuverability, or something large for brute force? ...Why am I even bothering to ask you? Your answer has always been and will always be brute force." 

James chuckled, nodding slightly. "Just between you and me...this once, I'd rather maneuverability over strength." 

Q put on a show of being shocked, "Even if I wanted to tell someone, it's not like a bloody soul would believe me." 

"Q, I'm scandalized that you would want to besmirch my good name!" 

"Of the two of us, I'm fairly certain you're the one besmirching _my_ good name." 

"Don't worry, Quartermaster. I'm only besmirching an alias anyway." 

"Mmm, that's right. You're the only one who knows my name." Q purred, slowing down and turning to James, ducking close and stealing a kiss to the corner of James's mouth. 

"Do you mind my calling you Q still, or would you prefer Bastian...or Alaric?" 

"Fuck no, not Alaric. And I earned Q. I like that when you call me by my name, you do it for a reason." Q admitted, ears just slightly pink, "I never wanted to be Alaric, but Boothroyd knew that I would need to have another name."

"How old were you when you were recruited?" James demanded wonderingly. 

"Seventeen." Q replied on a sigh, "I'd dropped out of uni--" 

"How many years were you in uni before you dropped out?" 

Q laughed, "Just two." 

"You were a fifteen-year-old in uni..." 

"Ask me." Q ordered, "Just ask." 

"How old are you really, Q?" 

"Thirty-eight." 

"No fucking way." James laughed. "I don't believe you." 

Q grinned, "I was married for ten years, James. Dated before that for three--" 

It called into stark relief how twisted it was; for Q to have stayed so long in a relationship that had been entirely unhappy. Q had insisted that he needed the stability provided; but James didn't know how someone like Q could doom themselves to a life half-lived. 

But James was beginning to believe Q when he said that James and he were not so different; James lived only half his life, too--or had, before the world had ended. Now, he felt he was free to live more fully, if only for the fact that the duty he had to his country was now simply to survive, and to rebuild. All the world had been brought low, according to Q-Branch's intel, and James was happy to begin to live his life if he could live it with Q. 

Alec had been concerned--loudly concerned--that James feeling that way was reminiscent of James's resignation for Vesper. But the more James thought about it, the more it was perfectly clear to him that he wasn't resigning by any stretch; choosing Q meant that he would never have to, because Q knew the job and so much more than accepted it. 

They rounded the street from the same direction James had come that night--the body of Q's husband long dragged off. The house was unmarked, though James was fairly sure that the debris littering the front yard and the steps was thicker. James could only hope that Q's protections had stayed in place while they'd been absent; and as Q carefully opened the door, James swept into the house, trailing Q behind him as he cleared each room carefully...and found nothing amiss. On the kitchen table, Rosie's energy gun had been disassembled and left; she hadn't had the equipment to fix it, even in Q's workroom. Alec had left a box of cookies on the side table to the couch. If James was the type to be able to delude himself, he'd think that they'd never left; that the others would be appearing from the workroom or the bedrooms in just a moment. Turning back to Q, James expected the quiet sorrow; knew what to do with Q's grief. What he hadn't counted on was the silent rage and the guilt that went with it hand-in-hand. 

"Q..." James began, cautious even to his own ears. 

"I should have..." Q's fists clenched, "She would be--" Q picked up a mug from the drying rack next to the sink and threw it against the door, rage clear in his grey-green eyes as he whirled, "She'd be safe if it weren't for me--Bloody bringing them here, let alone what I did to cause this fucking mess!" 

"Q!" James snapped, trying for a shock to the system but getting only argument. 

"What was my job, James?! What was the one bloody thing I was meant to do as your Quartermaster? I was meant to make the world safer for you and our operatives--" 

"You did." James growled, leaning into the argument despite his better instincts. 

"Bloody fucking _how_ , James?! How was causing this in the best interests of crown and country?!" 

"You created--" 

"A monster, James. A world full of monsters, actually. I built a nanobot that could handle genetic material--an integration system for putting a foreign trace in the body that could be triggered whenever it was wanted. How could I not have known?!" 

"Because you're good, Q!" James found himself shouting, "You're a good man and a great Quartermaster and you didn't see this because it was mad in a way that can only be understood by someone who's twisted enough to be on the edge of evil. You didn't see this because there was no way to see it." 

"I made the Walther so that only you could use it...I should have--" 

"You didn't need to! You were keeping safe the important part, Q. The hardware may well have hit the market anyway given a few years for what it could mean--what it could do." Q was swaying slightly on his feet, his eyes wet but the anger still written for all the world to see, and James found himself holding Q steady in the next breath, the anger mixing with a frustration and pain that threatened to take Q's knees out from under him. "You kept your agents safe. That was and remains your job. To aid us out there, and sometimes to bring us back. To keep us steady. You've done that marvellously, Quartermaster." 

Q's weight leant into James and James's voice dropped as Q's lashes fluttered against tears. James pulled Q in until their foreheads met softly, the two of them sharing air as they draped their arms around each other. Q licked his lips, "I..." 

James traced his nose over Q's for a moment before he ducked in, pressing his mouth to Q's in a chaste, simple kiss. "No." James murmured with conviction. 

"But I should have--" 

"No." James told him again, and pressed another soft kiss to his mouth. 

"James..." Q managed, and James licked fleetingly at the seam of Q's lips before he delved into a toe-curling kiss, Q's hands curling tight on James's shoulders. 

"Stop blaming yourself." James ordered, voice husky, when they finally broke apart. 

"Force of habit," Q quipped. 

"Well then, for every time you blame yourself--and I'll know when you do--I add another hour of sleep to your sentence. For every moment you don't..." James trailed off as he trailed a line of stinging kisses down Q's throat, only just gently enough not to leave marks. 

Q huffed a laugh, "Where was this kind of thinking in the field?" 

"I find myself inspired." James allowed, "Now...you've been blaming yourself all day, so let's get you to bed, Q, you have a lot of sleeping to do." James grinned wickedly, and Q laughed. 

Q turned to start up the stairs, but paused only three stairs up, “We have two free beds, but…I find I don’t want to sleep in either of them.” 

James alit on the stairs, his hand splaying over Q’s side as he reached that stair, “I’d strenuously protest if you did.” 

Q smiled softly, leaning into James and offering his mouth up for a long, leisurely kiss. James gave in to the urge to pick Q up and carry him upstairs, laughing into Q’s neck as the man let out a short shriek of surprise, clinging to James’s shoulders. “I am perfectly capable of walking!” 

“Yes, but I’m also perfectly capable of carrying you.” James replied evenly, “And what’s more, you like it.” 

Q huffed, but didn’t deny it, and James made a mental note to explore Q’s interest in his physique further when Q wasn’t quite so exhausted. Reaching the door to the library, James let Q down on his fainting couch, moving To gather the blankets from Q’s nest and James’s pull-out bed before thinking better of his original plan, and opting instead to pull the mattress, such as it was, off the pull-out to fit it on the floor. Q caught on, standing to fling the collection of pillows towards the head of the bed, James spreading out the blankets as Q beat the pillows into fluffy place. 

“I’ll stay with you until it’s fully dark.” James told him. 

Q shook his head, a smile teasing at his lips, “There used to be block parties…the outdoor sound system still works.” 

James chuckled, shaking his head, “Then I won’t have to leave you at all, will I?” 

Q’s smile was soft and hazy, and he reached for a brush of a kiss before he moved to go back downstairs and put their protection in place. With him gone, James shirked his clothes, forgoing the soft fabric of his borrowed pyjamas to sleep in his pants beneath the mound of blankets he knew Q ran cold enough to need. James made himself as comfortable as possible, listening as Q climbed the stairs again, and sighed to himself at the thought of what it would have been like to have known Q was there when he’d been recruited; to have headed off the prat of a husband and been there for Q when he’d needed someone strong enough to be believed when he would have told Q just how strong and capable and brilliant he was. James imagined this house as theirs, instead of a relic of enforced unhappiness. 

Q pushed into the room and seemed to get suddenly shy as he looked at James under the collection of covers. “Do you want me to sleep somewhere else, Bastian?” James asked when Q didn’t seem to be breaking through his nerves. 

“N-No…of course not, James.” Q twitched a smile, pulling off his jacket and the sweater beneath it, “I just…Are you sure you want to be here? With me?” 

James drew back the covers and stood in what would look like one movement, prowling towards Q as if James had become a jungle cat on the hunt. “Q, there is no one else I’d rather go to bed with.” James told him, voice between a purr and a rasp of silk over sensitive skin. Q shivered as James reached out and lured him against James’s chest. “Do you want to know what I was thinking of while you were downstairs taking care of us? Do you want to know how badly I wish that I’d seen you back then? That this was our home, your life untouched by his and mine to help you keep safe?” 

Q was shivering more as James spoke, James’s lips against Q’s temple, then dropped to the hollow of Q’s throat as he stripped away the button-up beneath the sweater. “I suspect it’s rather similar to how _badly_ I’ve wanted you.” Q’s voice broke as James nipped at his pulse point, beard dragging over his skin. “But M would never have approved…” 

“I get the feeling Boothroyd would have had a repeat of that time he chased me with a tie-pin taser for losing tech if I’d laid hands on you.” James laughed, voice throaty enough that Q clung to his shoulders as he slowly inched down Q’s trousers. 

“M liked you too much to see you forced to deal with me—“ Q gave a satisfying squeak as James bit his pulse outright this time, and James licked the blooming mark. 

“No, she’d’ve thoroughly enjoyed the fact that if I had a row with you, you had the potential to kill me.” 

James led Q the stumbling steps to their bed, and Q welcomed James into his arms easily, lying back against the pillows with James’s head neatly tucked against his shoulder as if they’d belonged just like that all along. James found himself melting into Q’s embrace as though boneless, the two of them fitting easily together; James’s relative bulk pressing Q into the mattress without crushing him. “I’d never consider killing you,” Q whispered his assurance against James’s hair, “you’ve always been my favourite.” 

James laughed, and his hands forming perfectly to Q’s hips. He’d meant to get Q into his pyjamas; meant to keep a careful space between them until Q initiated anything more, but Q’s clever fingers were petting through his hair, down his back, and James couldn’t be arsed to care about his plans. “Even when I didn’t bring back my equipment?” James was surprisingly hazy with sleep as he asked, Q’s fingers tracing up and down the dip of his spine in a mesmerizing way. 

“None of you bloody do. You, at least, lost it in interesting ways.” 

 

~

 

Two years later, light flooded the Sussex house as James and Q woke up together, wrapped around each other, under the familiar weight of a nest of blankets. 

Stretching deliciously, Q nuzzled into James's collarbone; not willing to open his eyes until he absolutely had to. James hummed, wrapping an arm around Q's waist and drawing him further into James's hold, naked skin against naked skin. James had only just come home the night before; his trip longer than he would have liked, but fruitful enough to have made up for it. 

Q hadn't slept well since James left--James knew the signs, though he was loathe to see them. What's more, Q had been there every moment James had needed him...and James had been awake for long enough himself. 

He needed food, he knew; his hunger had woken him, but he was tempted to will himself back to sleep. Sighing, Q brushed his palm over the definition of James's chest, still half-asleep as he traced warm skin and faded wounds. 

"Alec, Eve, and Ellie will be here by tonight." Q groaned, "I want so badly to stay in bed with you..." 

"Mmm," James rumbled in response, though he wasn't sure that the sound wasn't the purr of a contented cat under the capable hands of someone who knew how best to touch him, "we'll bar the door--" 

"You want to see Ellie." Q pointed out muzzily. 

"I'd rather stay in bed." James tried to protest, but he knew with the certainty of someone whose life hung from the capable hands of the man beside him that Q would take care of him in the way he needed, even if it wasn't entirely in the way he wanted. 

"We were going to explode things with her." Q reminded him, poorly suppressing a yawn, "You know that exploding things trumps staying in bed, love." 

James groaned, shifting so that he could lick into Q's mouth, arms banding around Q's still-skinny frame as he did. "I love you more than I can possibly say." 

A smile brushed over Q's lips like a leaf tracing a river in the wind, "And I love you, James."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I only wrote the first chapter over the last five years. After that, things have been current. 
> 
> Please forgive me.

**Author's Note:**

> So I've been sitting on this for...well, years. Since around 2014. 
> 
> Up to you if you want more, my freaky darlings!


End file.
